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Animated walk cycles

For anyone who is not a full-time rigger or animator, but has tried to create a simple walk cycle, you'll no doubt remember all the time and effort you put in, only to have your character walk like a zombie. Well,  a fellow MODOnaut, Michael Gass, has created this animated walk-cycle script for ACS rigs that will help you out immensely. Even if it's not perfect, it will get you well on your way!

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Lining up texture locators

Most people think that Texture Locators are just those widgets that get in the way while you're trying to work on your scene, but James Darknell takes some time to explain how they work and offers a different way to quickly align them to your item's surface.

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Numeric Entry Field Tips

One of the handiest things you can use in your everyday workflow is the versatile way you can approach entering numbers into MODO. Here in this video, James Darknell explains a variety of ways that even many MODO experts are unaware of.

http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/tv/training/view.aspx?id=659

I particularly like the Gang Edit. 🙂

In addition to being able to edit the number fields by typing in numbers, users can gang edit all three fields simultaneously by LMB+Clicking the icon to the left of the mini-slider enabling the feature.

Gang-edit

 

INDEPENDENT - The default is i 'Independent', controls are edited independently.

COPY - The first click changes the field = 'Copy', will make whatever you type into the first field, the same in the other two fields.

PROPORTIONAL - The second click changes to ∞ (infinity) 'Proportional' where value changes are applied proportionally to all like controls.

RELATIVE - The third click changes to + 'Relative', the value change is added to all like controls. For instance if you divided the first field by /2 the other two fields would recalculate dividing by two as well.

When entering numeric values, you can use keyboard equivalents as well, such as;

'Ctrl'+'Alt'+'Enter'for Copy

'Ctrl'+'Enter' for Proportional

'Alt'+'Enter' for Relative

 

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Confused by Action Centers?

It took a while until Action Centers sunk in for me, so assuming I'm not the only one that couldn't wrap your head around them, I thought I'd post up this neat .pdf I found some time back.

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Modelling a quick trellis

Description

Creating background assets that aren't the primary focus in a game, can be pretty time-consuming for something that no-one really looks at, but they do add to the atmosphere of the game. Here's a quick way of creating a simple item that could be used as metal scaffolding, a tower or even a simple bridge in less than 5 minutes, using basic polygon modelling tools.

Step-by-Step

As shown in the image above;

    • Create a cube. Select one poly face and under the Polygon tools tab, select Sketch Extrude and drag out from the blue dot for the required length, making multiple, even stops along the way.
    • (Alternatively, simply drag out a cube that is say, 1x1x10)
    • In poly-mode, double-click on the item to select all polygons.
    • Under the Polygon tab, click on the Spikey tool, then click on the object. Each face will be sub-divided into 4 tris.
    • Whilst still selected, click on Bevel (B) (make sure Group Polygons is unchecked), and then drag the red-handle in slightly.
    • Press backspace or Delete to remove the inside polygons.
    • That's it!
    • If you want to add some thickness, whilst still selected, click on the Thicken tool and drag slightly.
Source  You can watch a video that details the process here
Author  Ellery Connell - video2brain.com
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Positioning grass or fur around objects

Description

Replicators are a great feature in modo allowing us to replicate an object multiple times using a fraction of computing resources. When it comes to grass or fur you can sometimes have a problem that is referred to as interpenetration. This is when you have say grass that grows around objects like rocks or pavers. .

Alessandro Masciari has written an excellent, detailed explanation of how to overcome this problem. But in a nutshell...

Note: this method was created during the 601 era. You can see Andy Brown demonstrating this example using procedural tools (at ~18 mins) using MODO 10.1
   
Step-by-Step
    • Place the grass into a Group
    • Create a replicator using the Grass group as Prototype and the ground item as the Point Source.
    • Hide the grass from the renderer by unchecking it under the Group tab
    Group tab
    • Create an Ambient Occlusion Render Output
    • Set the Frame to be square
    • Create a map and bake to render output
    • In the Shader Tree, inside the Ground material group, create a Surface Generator
    • Load the AO image into the same material group and change its effect to "Surface Particle Density"
    SurfParticleDensity
    • Under the Replicator Properties tab, substitute "Ground" with "Surface Generator"
    ReplicatoProperties
    Source http://kroncept.blogspot.com.au/2011/07/grass-around-objects.html
    Author  Alessandro Masciari

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    Texture Bombing - Single Texture

    Description

    Tileable textures work for some jobs, but sometimes you need your surface to appear seamless, especially when you have expansive scenes of natural elements like grass, stone and sand. That's when texture replicators come in handy.  

    Instead of tiling an image across a plane, the texture replicators new to modo 601 allows you to place a small copy of the image at each vertex. From there you can randomly scale, rotate and blend them to make the surface appear seamless.

    Here is a simple example that will hopefully get you on the right path, however if it doesn't address all of your questions, maybe the video links below will.

    Preparation

    It's assumed that you already have your terrain or whatever mesh item you wish to apply your texture to.

    Step-by-Step

      Apply texture
      • Select your mesh, apply a material.
      • With the material selected> Add Layer > Image Map > Load Image of your grass, dirt or other preferred texture.
      Correct Gamma
      • Under > Properties > Texture Layers > Gamma, divide the gamma 1.0 by 2.2 = .4546
      Adjust Gamma
      Increase Wrap
      • Under > Properties > Texture Locator > Projection, increase both Horizontal & Vertical Wraps so that they appear tiled. Try 10 x 10 (but it really depends on the texture you are using)
      • Note: Make sure you have the Render Preview Window open, as texture replicators do not show up in the Open GL viewport.
      Texture Replicator
      • Under > Properties > Texture Locator > Texture Replicator > Particle Source, select the mesh item you wish to apply the image map to.
      • Increase the Particle Size so that each image is almost touching
      • Adjust the Falloff Bias and Gain so that the mess is totally and evenly covered.
      • Adjust the Random Size, Rotation and Random Rotation as required.
      Texture Replicator settings

    Source

    James has recorded two videos on Texture Replicators. The first shows how to make a seamless grass plane, and the second explains texture bombing where you use multiple texture images under a single material.

    Author  

    MutantPixel (James Darknell)

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    Texture Bombing using multiple images

    Description

    Regular textures like the ones shown above are adequate for most jobs, but occasionally you may want to mix it up a bit and create something a little more unique, yet still make it look organic.

    So for example, say I wanted to use the grass, rocks and sand above to create a random terrain image. Now, I could go into Photoshop and create a mashup of these three textures, but once I'm back in modo, if I had to cover an expansive area, I'd still have to contend with the tiling issue, and in the real-world, having tiled rocks and grass just doesn't cut it. That's where texture bombing comes in.

    Texture bombing is a procedural technique that helps reduce regular pattern artefacts. We do this by first placing a bunch of different textures into a Group, and then using modo's Texture Replicators, a small copy of one of the Group's images is randomly placed at each vertex across the mesh. From there you can further randomly scale, rotate, and blend the textures together to make the surface appear seamless and quite natural-looking. 

    Preparation It's assumed that you've already created your mesh item that you wish to apply your textures to.
    Step-by-Step

      Apply texture
      • Select your mesh, apply a material.
      • With the material selected> Add Layer > Image Map > Load Image and bring in several different images. I'm using grass, rocks and sand.
      Correct Gamma
      • Selecting all the texture images at one, under > Properties > Texture Layers > Gamma, divide the gamma 1.0 by 2.2 = .4546
      Adjust Gamma
      Increase Wrap
      • Under > Properties > Texture Locator > Projection, increase both Horizontal & Vertical Wraps so that they appear tiled. Try 10 x 10 (but it really depends on the texture you are using)
      Create Group of textures
      • From the Shader Tree, select all the texture map images you want to use in your 'texture bomb'
      Create Group
      • Go to the > Group tab > New Group, name your group and leave it as Standard
      Create Group
       Replace current image with the Group
      • Under > Properties > Texture Layers > Image, change it to the Group you just created
      IMage Group
      Note: Make sure you have the Render Preview Window open, as texture replicators do not show up in the Open GL viewport.
      Texture Replicator
      • Under > Properties > Texture Locator > Texture Replicator > Particle Source, select the mesh item you wish to apply the image map to.
      • Increase the Particle Size so that each image is almost touching
      • Adjust the Falloff Bias and Gain so that the mess is totally and evenly covered.
      • Adjust the Random Size, Rotation and Random Rotation as required.
      Create Group

    And this is a quick and dirty random terrain texture created with the three images at the top of the page.

    Create Group
    Source

    James has recorded two videos on Texture Replicators. The first shows how to make a seamless grass plane, and the second explains texture bombing where you use multiple texture images under a single material.

    Author  

    MutantPixel (James Darknell)

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