Character Walking on a terrain – Maya and Virtools. - Tinkering.net

<strong>Character</strong> <strong>Walking</strong> on a terrain – Maya and Virtools.Please note that the step by step creation of joints is also covered in the skinning tutorial.

In polygonal mode, after modeling your character, go to Polygons > Reduce 50% repeat this stepseveral times until you get a polygon count around 2500 polygons.Go to Shading > Shade Options > Xray, draw the joints, from root to Right leg, step 1. From root to spine 1 - spine5 and Right arm, step 2. Duplicate leg and arm, step 3. Move Left leg and Left arm. Parent Left leg with root.Parent Left arm with spine 5. Go to Windows > Outliner, double click on the joint’s name to rename the joints.

In Maya, click the Object tool in the toolbar. Select the mesh, Select the mesh by Shift-clicking onit. Both the skeleton and the meshwill now be highlighted. Select Animation mode in the drop-down menu in the top left corner ofthe Tool bar. Choose Skinning menu > Bind skin box. The Bind skin option box will open. Inthe Bind skin option box select the following options:• Complete skeleton• Closest Joint binds the joint completely (i.e. 100%) to thebone closest to it.

To create FK, Forward Kinematics, move the joint with the rotation tool, hit “s”. Go to Windows .Animation Editors > Dope Sheet, to visualize keyframes for each joint.

To create a move forward motion, go to the last keyframe, for example 30, select the Root joint,drag the character forward, for example on the Z axis, create a keyframe, hit”s”.

Select the Root joint in order to select all the skeleton. Export character and animation to the“characters” subfolder located inside the DataResources folder created in Virtools. Remember tospecify the length of the animation that you created in Maya.

Import the character in Virtools using the DataResources folderAdd BB ><strong>Character</strong>s > <strong>Character</strong> Controller and BB > Controller > Keyboard Controller

Test the character animation, press the following keyboard keys Mum8 Num 4 Num 6 Num2.Add a collision detection attribute to the trees.

Step 1, in tree setup window, go to the Atttribute mode. Step 2, 3,4, select Add Attribute >Collision Manager > Fixed Obstacles. Step 5, select the Bounding Box option.

Add BB > <strong>Character</strong>s > Enhanced <strong>Character</strong> Keep on FloorTest the character.

Go to BB > 3DEntity > Object Slider, drag and drop on the character. Select the fixed objectsgroup as the group to slide on. Test the character walking against the trees. The character slideson the trees.