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FLEXIBLE RIGGING TOOLSET |
XSI has an extremely flexible rigging and character toolset. You can start with pre-built biped, dog-leg and quadruped rigs, or create a more customized setup using intuitive proportioning guides that you can convert to fully customizable rigs. Just as easily, you can dive right in and build your rigs from scratch, setting up your own control objects, and adding special components like quaternion spines and spring-based tails.
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Rig proportioning guides let you quickly tailor a skeleton to suit your character, and then turn it into a rig with a single click.
XSI also provides a Character Development Kit (CDK) that allows you to build the components of your rig (torso, belly, arm, hand, spine, hip, tail, leg, dog leg, and foot) using simple commands, without worrying about the implementation details. You can mix and match components to create whatever kind of rig you need—a two-headed monster, an eight-armed octopus, a multi-legged centipede, etc. The CDK is fully scriptable, so it’s easy to produce large numbers of rigged characters to suit your production. |
Shadow rigs |
©2007 Images courtesy Grzegorz Jonkajtys and Marcin Kobylecki |
For exporting complex animation to game engines, crowd simulation engines, and other applications requiring simpler character setups, XSI lets you create shadow rigs as you’re creating your master rigs. You can constrain null hierarchies, box hierarchies, XSI skeletons, or simple SOFTIMAGE|3D style skeletons to a master rig so you can animate your character using the full XSI toolset and then export only the data that’s appropriate for your game or simulation engine. If you need to, you can break the constraints between your main rig and your shadow rig using a single command. |
Constraints
XSI’s powerful constraint system lets you create flexible control structures for your characters’ skeletons and deformers. You can easily set up pose constraints, position constraints, orientation constraints, up-vector constraints and more. A fully animatable constraint compensation system lets you offset control objects interactively so you can change your rigs at any time without breaking them. You can use constraints in conjunction with expressions and scripted operators that you can edit in the in the dope sheet, fcurve editor, and even the animation mixer for layered control of your characters. When you play back your animation, real-time persistence, allows you to manipulate your targets while your constraints are evaluated in real time.
Learn how to quickly set up basic pose and path constraints, and how to blend between constraints. Download video - right-click and save as...
Child compensation lets you offset constrained objects from one another without having to reorder the hierarchy. Download video - right-click and save as... |
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Expressions XSI expressions let you control any animatable parameter using mathematical formulas, without needing a detailed knowledge of scripting. You can create almost any connection you like between parameters, from simple “A = B” relationships to very complex ones using predefined variables, standard math functions, random number generators, conditions, and more. You can create expressions by dragging and dropping, or using the expression editor, which validates expressions as you build them. Use expressions together with constraints and fcurve animation for precise control over your characters. |
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Copyright Blur Studio |
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CHARACTER TOOLS |
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MOTOR – Retarget animations to other rigs
MOTOR is an intelligent and dependable solution for transferring motion from one character rig to another while preserving keyframe timing. You can transfer motion between character rigs of all sizes and proportions, and build reusable libraries of animation by importing and retargeting motion capture data onto standard XSI character rigs. Retargeting adjustments can be saved to external files and then loaded onto numerous characters to quickly make the same adjustments. As with other Softimage technologies, MOTOR can be extended to handle specialized content. Our Special Projects or SWAT engineering team can work with you to develop custom version of motor that suit your unique pipeline requirements.
Motor allows you to quickly apply motion capture data to characters, modify the animation, and transfer the motion onto other characters. Download video - right-click and save as... |
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Pre-Built Characters XSI comes with a library of pre-built characters and models that you can use to start a project quickly, or simply to experiment with XSI’s character tools. Just open the Get > Primitive menu, where you’ll find skins, skeletons envelopes, and rigs for male and female bipeds, faces, and quadrupeds like a dog and an elephant. All of XSI’s pre-built characters and rigs are tagged for use with MOTOR, and come complete with character key sets so you can key them with a single click. Skeletons
In XSI, you can use any object as a deformer, with the most common approach being to build skeletons for your characters using flexible 2D Planar and 3D chains. You can draw chains, create them from curves, and even build them symmetrically to quickly create arms and legs. You can easily add, remove, and duplicate bones, and parent them to create the skeleton’s hierarchy. Shadow objects can help you reduce the number of control objects you need by providing simple, selectable 3D representations of chain elements.
Watch this clip for a quick overview of skeletons and their properties. Download video - right-click and save as...
Customizable bone display options let you choose from a wide variety of shapes for bones, effectors, roots, nulls, and their shadow objects, while an X-Ray display mode lets you see your skeletons through their envelopes as you manipulate them in the viewports.
X-ray display mode lets you see your character's skeleton without hiding the geometry. Download video - right-click and save as... |
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Two types of X-ray shading let you see through geometry to view and select skeletons and other control objects. |
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Skinning & Weighting Tools
Once you’ve created your character’s skeleton, it’s time to give it a skin with XSI’s enveloping tools. XSI’ layered approach to envelope weighting allows you to control initial deformer assignments and weights, and then refine them using bounding volumes, point reassignments, numerical editing, and interactive brush-based weight painting.
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XSI's skinning and weighting tools give you several ways to control envelope weight assignments.
Enveloping tools are all available from the weight panel. XSI’s completely non-destructive approach, allows you to decide when the enveloping assignment is evaluated, so you can finalize your characters by adding more deformations to create realistic skin sliding, muscles, etc.
Sometimes the simplest example is the best. Here, you'll see everything you need to get started with XSI's skinning and weighting tools as an artist envelopes a cylinder. Download video - right-click and save as...
If you prefer something a bit more true to life, this enveloping example uses a biped character. Download video - right-click and save as... |
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