This is a temporary page for Smartgons. It is supposed to give You some information about that forthcoming Lightwave plugin. You can read a short overview and feature list of Smartgons, as well as download two video demos showing Smartgons in action. Smartgons are expected to be released soon, stay tuned for more info.
Building
rigs can be a tedious task, moreover You need to rebuild rig for each
new character almost from the scratch. The idea behind Smartgons is
to give You a functionality to store entire rig inside Modeler (including
IK settings, Goals, Nulls, setting up Schematic View, plugins and many
more) and then reuse it all or only a piece for other characters which
can be of any type. Smartgons are skelegons, in fact, but they carry
some extra data tagged to them. Smartgons consist of several plugins.
The main ones are:
Smartgons Editor works in Modeler
and provides an interface for setting up all options Smartgons can carry.
Editor can be used to build whole rig in Modeler or tweak the one imported
from Layout
Smartgons Converter allows You for for converting previously
configured skelegons hierarchy in a fully functional rig just with a
click of a mouse. It works like standard ConvertSkelegons2Bones but
it's way more powerful. As a matter of fact You can use Converter as
ConvSkel2Bones replacement and You will get some extra options then.
Smartgons Exporter is a very robust one. It will record a whole
rig (see features paragpraph below to find out what settings get saved)
from Layout. Next You can import this rig directly into Modeler with
Smartgons Import command (and LoadBones free plugin from DStorm
optionally, this plugin is not a part of Smartgons). The connection
is seamless, just hit Export in Layout then Import in Modeler and You're
done.
As You will see on video demos (below) Smartgons can deal even with
complex rigs taking advantage of functions like sliders, motion modifiers,
motion mixer actors, item shapes, proxy picks and more.
six
types:
general functions:
bones:
IK:
motion:
additional:
default behaviours:
schematic:
presets:
plugins:
color, lock, hide, record pivot rotation, parent, target, snap, set effector,
inactivate, strength, joint compensation, muscle flexing,
unaffected by IK, goal, match goal orientation,
controllers, limits, channel locking,
falloff type, subdivision order, display and render subpatch levels,
automatic assignement of options based on Smartgon's type or name,
schematic view reference layer,
presets with SET type Smartgons,
custom object, displacement, motion, master class plugins support, thanks to smartlinks technique stored plugin settings are independent from a scene file they were saved from, it means You can apply the same plugin settings to different scenes.
Video
shows how to work in both Modeler and Layout to create a simple rig.On
a two legs setup example You can see how to mix Modeler and Layout environments
to work fast and comfortable. Video is 2 times faster then realtime.
This is demo of new Export/Import features that allow You to smartgonize any existing rig scene for further adjustments in Modeler. Video shows smartgonizing process of a full featured Bolo rig. As You can see Smartgon rigs can contain expressions, custom objects, motion mixer actors and more. After importing to Modeler rig is modified in a simple way - Bolo gets taller, and converted back in Layout. Video is 2 times faster then realtime.
Smartgons Editor development by
Lukasz
Pazera
www.pazur.3d.pl
Pawel Olas
www.polas.net