Ragdoll August Challenge

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Hi everyone!

Hot off the heels of our July challenge, this next challenge is hosted by our friends over at Agora, here are the details.

https://agora.community/AnimChallenge


Posting and Submission

We will be available both on this forum, and in the Agora Discord chat; so you’re welcome to post work-in-progress either here or there.

If you do post in there, it would be marvellous if you could also post here so as to gather all great content in one place for future Ragdoller’s to witness! :blush:

Final submissions are happening at the Agora Discord chat, stay tuned for a link.


Prizes

Here’s what we’ve got for you this time around!

Product Value Licence
1x Ragdoll Unlimited $1,999 Lifetime
1x Ragdoll Complete $799 Lifetime
1x Ragdoll Personal £99 Lifetime

Assets

We’ve got 5 assets for you, courtesy of Agora and Jason’s mad Ragdoll rigging skills.

  • Manikin - The simplest of the bunch
  • Woody
  • Spiderman - Requires mGear
  • Demon Gargoyle - Requires mGear
  • Unit 01 - Requires mGear

Download Links: https://agora.community/assets

Here’s what they look like!

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/2152766/182115713-82e2a6c9-b1e0-45d8-8b1c-add311055123.mp4

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/2152766/182115718-e4919c60-acec-4d92-9494-c538ea233ef1.mp4

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/2152766/182115722-68519026-50bb-4b94-b79e-8983be5fa6b6.mp4

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/2152766/182115731-9f4ef289-7592-4905-85d0-7ade18fb96be.mp4

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/2152766/182115742-b5bce209-0806-4a6c-aff9-b32fc00767d3.mp4

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/2152766/182115749-c139c0c9-10db-4b7a-ab77-efd97342c205.mp4

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/2152766/182115757-d411ffc6-d9cd-4a19-af32-4bb70762916f.mp4

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/2152766/182115768-430787b8-971e-4cf0-a77d-8b7f46434aee.mp4

https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/2152766/182115773-a098269d-7a81-475e-abe3-7a8b7b85e5bc.mp4


Tutorial

All rigs are setup similarly, here’s how you can use the Woody asset.

https://youtu.be/12oAdlCv_XE


Resources

To participate in this challenge, you’ll receive:

| Resource | Details
|:---------|:--------|:--------
| Assets | See above :point_up:
| Licence | See below :point_down:
| Support | Right here on the forums :fist:

To learn Ragdoll, have a look here for every resource currently available.


Licence

For the duration of this challenge, any and all participants are entitled to a free licence of Ragdoll Unlimited.

To use this licence, here’s what you do.

  1. Start Maya
  2. Open your Windows → General Editors → Script Editor
  3. Run this script:
    import os
os.environ["RAGDOLL_FLOATING"] = "agora1.ragdolldynamics.com:8011"
  4. Reload the Ragdoll plug-in

Troubleshooting

If the licence isn’t working, for any reason, try this alternative address.

  • agora2.ragdolldynamics.com:8004

If it still isn’t working, ensure that Maya has Internet access.

import socket

try:
    socket.create_connection(("agora1.ragdolldynamics.com", 8011)).close()
    print("You've got internet")
except Exception:
    print("Maya can't reach the internet")

If you’ve got internet access, but it still isn’t working, ensure the script above got called correctly by having Maya print the URL.

print("The URL is: %s" % os.environ["RAGDOLL_FLOATING"])

Still isn’t working? Let us know by posting to this thread.


Technical Users

The more technical user can put this into their userSetup.py script, to automatically load the licence on Maya startup. The even more technical user can set the RAGDOLL_FLOATING environment variable to this value. In both cases, you will be able to auto-load the plug-in without any further intervention.

That’s it! Agora is posting an announcement later today at which point I’ll update this post too. Stay tuned!

Best,
Marcus

5 Likes
2

Hey, it’s not working for me. I get “you’ve got internet” if I run the check, but both the addresses show my license as expired and no markers have physics.

3

Hey @V4NDL0, can you have a look at what this window looks like for you?

image
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If it isn’t listing the Agora URL, then make sure you’ve run the script above and then reloaded the plug-in.

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Hey, Unloading and re-loading the plugin fixed it. Thanks for your help.

1 Like
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Hi all,

In addition to the rigs on Agora’s website, here’s one more that is very light and highly performant. You would be able to reference 10 of these and animate them in parallel without trouble.

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In order to use the gargoyle and spidey rigs, users will also need to have a version of mgear installed.

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Yes, that is true! There is an mGear in each of the downloadable character rigs, but it can be a bit finnicky to install.

The above Manikin rig has no dependencies and is also welcomed to be used for this competition.

For setting up your own character, have a look at our official tutorials. It’s written not for the rigger, but for the animator, so don’t be shy!

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don’t know about others, but august challenge license stop working correctly, i was activate personal license and continue to play with that

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Thanks for reporting this. We just finished Siggraph and I will investigate this in the next 4-5 hours.

1 Like
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Sorry for the delay, the server had indeed gone down but is now back up!

1 Like
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It’s still not working for me. It stopped about a week ago and I have not been able to use it since then.

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I was just check it, and it works, try few things, start new scene, restart the ragdoll plugin thru windows–>preferences/settings–>Plugin manager
image
Good chance to understand what this software can do, don’t waste it

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Oh no! Can you share a screenshot of what you are seeing? Have you tried the test script above, starting with import socket? Have you tried the alternative URL, agora2.ragdolldynamics.com:8004?

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Last week I was also unable to use the 8011 script, but the 8004 was still working.

My steps to get it working consistently.

  1. Make sure ragdoll plugin isn’t set to load or auto load, keep them unchecked.

  2. Run either of the scripts, (the 8011 or 8004 one)

  3. Check-on the load checkbox for ragdoll in plugins window.

  4. Open your scene.

  5. Sometimes my scene crashes though if I try to open it and my maya playback is set to frame 1, but this is because I start my scenes ragdoll sims at frame 1001, so before I open up my scenes I also make sure that the first frame in my timeline is set to 1001.

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6 days remaining, of this secret, hush-hush competition. :shushing_face:

We’ve got 3 submissions at the moment, during these holiday times, making it very easy for any newcomer to swoop in and give it a shot. There is about $2600 on the line after all!

See your competition here:

6 days! Go go go! :partying_face:

3 Likes
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Only a few hours to go!!! Don’t forget to officially submit to Agora.community | AnimChallenge

Can’t wait for the watch party :slight_smile:

J

1 Like
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It’s done and dusted!

I also just got back from holiday, and will investigate how winners is actually decided upon. :sweat_smile: I expect Agora will run submissions through their usual competition cycle, and then announce the winners. I’ll make sure to forward everything to here as well, and do what we did last month.

3 winners are about to get ragdolled. Great work everyone! :partying_face:

4 Likes
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Alright, an update to say that voting has begun; it’ll happen within the Agora team and concludes on the 10th of September. We’ve got 11 submissions (although one of them is 2D and thus using Ragdoll hah, so 10 total!)

Will return once the winners are decided upon! :partying_face:

4 Likes
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Believe it or not, Agora has yet to tell us anything about who won. :sweat_smile: I’ll revisit this thread as soon as we know anything you don’t!

5 Likes
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The August Challenge winners have been chosen…

Now we know that agora announces the winners of their anim challenges on the second Tuesday of every month.

Congrats to the winners and everyone.

@marcus since its a twitch stream that will probably go away after a few days, maybe you could ask Agora to back it up and send you the video so you could preserve it on the ragdoll forums.

1 Like