Softimage Blog

When things go on the move! F-Curves, mixers, keys… If it changes over time it can wind up in here. A few old skeletons might also make an apearance from time to time!

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A while ago I posted a Scripted Operator for XSI that generates jittering animation. Well, a colleague of mine, Etienne Pellerin, and myself are starting to work in C++ in XSI so the Jitter tool was rewritten. New in Jitter v1.5: Installation is smoother – just drop it into your favourite Application/Plugins folder Performance is [...]

When I wrote the first article, I hadn’t planned on writing a sequel, but a couple of people on XSIBase asked me to look into how I could extend the Soft IK system to work with a stretchy bone chain. Initially, figuring out how this could work seems like a pretty tricky problem. The bone [...]

When an IK chain extends towards its full length, it will tend to snap into it’s final position. To prevent this from happening, it is possible to give the appearance that the IK chain is stiffening as it extends towards it’s full length. This technique isn’t new and similar functionality is already implemented in Cinema [...]

How to use a curve to roll something along its edges.

Anyone who”s had to do much work with Symmetry Mapping Templates (for transferring envelope weights from one side of a rig to another), or Connection Mapping Templates (used for applying actions to different bone rigs) will know that editing the data can be tricky and error prone. But there”s a solution.