Character Maker Locator

The Character Maker Locator displays the Golaem Crowd skeleton, its properties and its animation in Maya's viewport. It also allows to check that the skeleton and animation were loaded and edited correctly.


Character Maker Locator

CREATION

Whenever a character file is created or loaded, the Character Maker will also create a Character Maker Locator in Maya.

Note that the Character Maker Locator will be created on top of your Maya character, you can move it using Maya Move Tool if you want to compare them, as in the image below.

CONFIGURATION


Character Maker Locator Attributes

 

Enable Display Show/hide the Golaem Crowd skeleton. Note that the Character Maker Locator display can be enabled/disabled from the Character Maker Toolbar.
Show Axes Show/hide the Up and Front axis.
Show IK Planes Show/hide the character IK Normal Planes.
Show Bone Names Show/hide the name of the bones according to the ones displayed in the Character Maker.
Show Ground Height Show/hide the Ground Height Plane.
Show Ragdoll Volumes Show/hide the bounding volumes used for Physics simulation, see Bone Physics Properties.
Show Ragdoll Limits Show/hide the Lower and Upper Limits of the joint physics properties, see Bone Physics Properties.
Show Animation Show/hide the loaded animation in the character maker on the Golaem Crowd Locator.
Loop Animation If enabled the animation will not stopped when fully played, it will restart at the beginning.
Mirror Animation If enabled, the mirrored animation is played.
For mirror animation to work properly, the mirror must be correctly configured on the skeleton mapping, as explained on this page.
Preview Additive Animation If enabled, only the variations in the animation are played, relatively to the neutral stance displayed in red. It provides a preview of the animation if used in Additive Blend Mode in a Motion Behavior.

EDITING FOOTPRINTS

Footprints can be edited manually by editing keys on the Character Maker Locator node. When loading an animation, the Character Maker Locator node creates an attribute for each Motion Channel (each Limb). 

The first step is to identify the Channels on which you edit/add footprints in Main Workspace, after loading the Motion. In the example below, the character is a humanoid, and we want to compute footprints, so we will choose the Channels RightLeg and LeftLeg. In this case the Limb names already allow to choose the correct channels. These are usually the Channels of leg Limbs. 


Example of identifying the Channels that need footprints on a loaded Motion

Channel Box Editor

The Maya Channel Box editor can be used to edit existing keys or add new ones.

Select a key in the Maya Time Slider:

The next step is to edit the value for the wanted Channels in the Channel Box, and set a key on that value (right click -> Key Selected)

The Character Maker Locator will display a red rectangle on the limb whenever a footprint is on:

 

New footprints can be added by adding a new key to the Time Slider.

Graph Editor

The Maya Graph Editor can be used to edit existing footprints or add new ones, as in the example below:


Editing Footprints in the Graph Editor

Note that keys values should be set to 0 or 1.