Feedback!

kaehwai · 15 July 2022 21:06

Here am I, after a few days of testing. Hope they are useful in some ways. I am using maya2018.

Wonder is there ways to display the stiffness / density as vertex colour. That way, we can see in viewport what is pushing or dropping.

ways_to_convert_stiffness_vertex_color

Maybe what I am looking for is not stiffness. But joint tensity, that help will giving organic force distribution base on type of joint.

Is there ways to display the center of mass base on the ragdoll density?

in Manipulator mode, without a plan. turning on destination will crash the maya.

In general, I am hoping all the attributes changes kinda adjust the manipulator display to kinda feedback on what we are doing on the numbers!

Plan assigning terrain, kinda break the motion especially the end

Wonder if there is clearer ways to see window for plan foot placement. able to manipulate, tear off as a seperate window.
text-zoom-pan-scale

limit display maybe can be semi transparent cube so we see the volume. Right now its kinda 2D hard to judge where is where.
semi_transparent_to_see_depth_volume

I was hoping after setting plan, there are still ways to animate on top of it. Will be great if we can adjust the Body control trajectory and let the calculation happens on the contacts to match to the top adjustment

About recording animation, sometimes I have to record twice to get the result. Not sure why.

Distance constraint is brilliant, I still cant get it to work properly with the parent and child offset position. Maybe there is an easier way to move the offset in viewport?

marcus · 16 July 2022 15:58

Thanks for this @kaehwai!

Yes/no. It’s something we’ve considered for a while, it’s just not clear what it should look like. Between every joint, there are 2 constraints with their own stiffness and damping; one for Local and another for World. Each additional constraint, like the Pin Constraint, is also a constraint. And which should we draw, stiffness or damping? Or both? And how should we draw stiffnesses when one limb has a value of 0.01 and another a value of 1’000’000?

There is a way to do this. I just haven’t come across it yet. Your illustration helps! If you think of anything else, please keep posting ideas.

I can reproduce this and have a fix for the next release, thanks for reporting!

Not sure I follow; you can draw the center of mass for each Marker here:

Is that what you meant?

Very possible! The only question is how, what should it look like? If you have some ideas, I would love to see them! Visualisation is one of the greatest challenges; not technically, but artistically. How do you communicate these things without cluttering the viewport and confusing things further?

If you look top-left, you’ll see a message saying “Not enough iterations”.

That means it doesn’t finish. There isn’t enough iterations, it runs out of time and gives you the result it managed to come up with. You can try increasing the iterations, but you should also try giving it a target position that is on closer to the ground. At the moment, you are asking it to arrive high up in the air, and that’s a difficult task if there’s no ground and its legs aren’t long enough. Go to Target Mode and lower the target to the ground.

The crab is probably the worst example of Locomotion. We should have made a character with less feet, 10 feet is not normal and isn’t what the UI was designed for.

You can detach your viewport and give yourself an additional window to work with, but you can’t currently scale the UI. At the moment it’s designed for 1-4 feet. We’ve got things on the map here, but working with 5+ feet is going to be painful for a little while.

Animation layers not working for you?

Not sure I follow, can you elaborate on this?

Can you reproduce this? Could you have something selected and the Use Selection option ticked?

What about it isn’t working? Editing the parent and child offset is a pain, but does it not work? Maybe you can share an example.

kaehwai · 16 July 2022 21:34

Thanks for the reply Marcus!
Definitely more things for me to explore this tool has alot to offer!

Details about some of the points!

about COG, I am thinking more of the consolidated mass after looking at the ragdoll group density.

cog1280×669 161 KB

it changes when the density of the manipulator changes. And it appear as a group and micro level. That way, we can kinda see where it is rolling off if drop. Not considering the force exert on it.

about animation layer + plan. I think this works! As a layer on top!
about drawing the overall movement, I am thinking more of layer a master plan with the main ctr… and then plan will decide where to put the legs. We can still adjust the contact to influence the main ctr.

The focus is on performance, where the body is going and facing. The legs kinda catch the weight. Maybe thats a different feature. ^^

about distance constraint, I cant really get the contact location if the prop is animated. Heres example.

I probably can get the location with locator… go back to frame1 to match the locators… mm. but when I first try to work on the cheese roll… i just couldnt get a pinched location :') Maybe if we can adjust the parent and child during the contact moment that will be great!

On another thought, if that is driven by transform… it will definitely be easier!

marcus · 18 July 2022 06:57

Ah ok, that makes sense. This did exist in the past, the problem has been how to determine which masses to consolidate. Even with this crab, there are several groups and from your screenshot it looks like you’d expect the whole crab - all groups - to be consolidated into one. The question is how Ragdoll can figure that out. We could look at the hierarchy, but even with the crab, those feet aren’t actually part of the hierarchy but are instead constrained to the body.

I’ll think about this some more, it would certainly be a useful feature. The center of mass moves around a lot more than people think!

Ah I think I see what you mean. We’re adding the ability to specify multiple targets, as opposed to just the start + end. I think this should let you achieve what you’re looking for. Great illustration btw.

Yes, that is a little tedious. I’ll see if there’s a better way.