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<h1 id="helpdoc-product-title">ngSkinTools 2</h1>
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<div class="seller">Viktoras Makauskas</div>
<div class="description">ngSkinTools is a skinning plugin for Autodesk® Maya®, introducing new concepts to character skinning such as layers, any-pose-mirroring, enhanced paint brushes, true smoothing, and more.</div>
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<div id="helpdoc-tag"><a href="#description" class="helpdoc-breadcrumb">Description</a>
<a href="#generalinfo" class="helpdoc-breadcrumb">General Usage Instructions</a>
<a href="#screensinfo" class="helpdoc-breadcrumb">Screenshots</a>
<a href="#inunininfo" class="helpdoc-breadcrumb">Installation/Uninstallation</a>
<a href="#knownissueinfo" class="helpdoc-breadcrumb">Known Issues</a>
<a href="#contactinfo" class="helpdoc-breadcrumb">Contact</a>
<a href="#versionhistoryinfo" class="">Version History</a>
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<h1 id="description">Description</h1>
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<h3 id="layers">Layers</h3>
<p>Skinning
layers are a central feature of ngSkinTools. With them, you break your rig down
into easier manageable parts and edit them separately, then blend everything
together through layer transparency.</p>
<p>Theyre
not just a simple way to make your work more organized - they also physically
isolate groups of influences from the rest of the rig, so paint and edit
operations wont mix-in influences you were not expecting. This also allows you
to do things that were impossible before: per-layer mirroring, adjusting
influence weight up/down through layer transparency, blend transferred weights
with previous weights, to name a few.</p>
<h3 id="viewport-tools">Viewport
tools</h3>
<p>Just
like in the previous version, ngSkinTools brings its own weight painting tools.
Improving viewport experience is the main focus of V2, and it's complete revamp
over the previous implementation.</p>
<ul>
<li>Selecting
influences on screen, a #1 requested feature from users, is nowhere. Just hold
“S” and drag over the surface to select dominant influence from that part of
the mesh, or hover over a joint pivot to select precisely the joints you
want;</li>
<li>In
addition to the usual surface projection mode for the brush, the new “screen”
brush projection mode is useful when you want to quickly set weights for both
sides of the mesh;</li>
<li>Custom
shortcuts while in paint mode allow for quick access to intensity
presets;</li>
<li>Color
feedback is now provided through VP2 APIs, greatly improving the performance
of displayed meshes.</li></ul><br>
<h3 id="smoothing">Smoothing</h3>
<p>Keeping
weights in harmony with each other is not easy. ngSkinTools help you smooth
weights with the control you need, allowing you to control the intensity, number
of iterations and effective radius. For very dense meshes, added “iterations”
argument now allows for the quicker spread of smoothness over larger areas of
the mesh.</p>
<p>The
“relax” tool from V1 is gone. With major performance rework, youll notice that
simple flood-smoothing is now much faster and should be a near-instant operation
even with large meshes.</p>
<p>The
opposite “brother” of smooth brush, “sharpen”, is also there - for cases where
you want to just bring out the dominant influences</p>
<h3 id="mirroring">Mirroring</h3>
<p>Mirroring
is one of the most frequent automated tasks you might want from your skinning
tool. With ngSkinTools, youll be able to:</p>
<ul>
<li>Mirror
rigs in any pose; no need to switch to T-pose;</li>
<li>Have
granular control over left/right/center influences mapping, matching
left/right joints by naming convention, joint labels, etc;</li>
<li>Easily
mirror parts of your rig by leveraging layers;</li>
<li>Automatic
mirroring of weights to the opposite side as you paint so that you dont need
to get distracted from painting while working on symmetrical layers.</li></ul><br>
<h3 id="layer-effects">Layer
effects</h3>
<p>With
the “mirror as a layer effect” feature, ngSkinTools introduce a new concept to
ngSkinTools - layer effects. This differs from automatic mirroring of weights as
its not directly modifying your layer weights; instead, its a post-effect that
happens in the background buffer. This has multiple benefits, like a much
cleaner seamline of left/right sides, the ability to tweak mirroring settings
AFTER weights are painted, etc.</p>
<h3 id="compatibility">Compatibility</h3>
<p>As
it's predecessor, ngSkinTools2 operates on standard Maya skinCluster (also known
as “smooth skin”), so no custom nodes will be required to use your rig. The
plugin has a couple of custom nodes, but theyre only required while you work on
setting up your skin weights and can be deleted after, so your work should stay
compatible with most pipelines out there.</p>
<h3 id="performance">Performance</h3>
<p>A
lot of speed improvements have been made since V2, like improving the
utilization of modern multi-core processors, or eliminating bottlenecks through
much heavier use of performance profiling. Having a responsive, snappy tool is
always a pleasure to work with.</p></div></div>
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<h1 id="generalinfo">General Usage Instructions</h1>
<div class="helpdoc-text"><p>The installer from Autodesk App Store loads the application under the Custom shelf.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ngskintools.com/docs"target="_blank">http://www.ngskintools.com/docs/</a></p></div>
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<h1 id="screensinfo">Screenshots</h1>
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<h1 id="commandinfo">Commands</h1>
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<h1 id="inunininfo">Installation/Uninstallation</h1>
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<p>The installer that ran when you downloaded this plug-in from Autodesk App Store has already installed the plug-in. Windows only: To uninstall this plug-in, simply rerun the installer downloaded, and select the 'Uninstall' button, or you can uninstall it from 'Control Panel\Programs\Programs and Features', just as you would uninstall any other application from your system. The panel on the Plug-ins tab will not be removed until Maya is restarted.</p>
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<p>Linux and OSX: To uninstall this plug-in, simply delete the module directory from your system. The panel on the Plug-ins tab will not be removed until Maya is restarted.</p>
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<p>Download .msi and run it on your computer. The installation will place files in&nbsp;<code>C:\ProgramData\Autodesk\ApplicationPlugins\ngskintools2</code>&nbsp;(unless your&nbsp;<code>%ProgramData%</code>&nbsp;the environment variable is different).</p>
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<p>Using an autoloader system, nothing needs to be configured additionally. Maya scans autoloader locations for plugins at startup and configures each discovered plugin automatically. The autoloader will create a “ngSkinTools2” shelf with a button to open UI.</p>
<p>Now, restart Maya and a new tab&nbsp;ngSkinTools2&nbsp;should appear on your shelf.</p></div>
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<h3>Available on</h3>
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<tr><td><img height=48 src="./Resources/win64.png" /></td><td><img height=48 src="./Resources/macos64.png" /></td><td><img height=48 src="./Resources/linux64.png" /></td></tr>
<tr><td align="center">Windows</td><td align="center">Mac OSX</td><td align="center">Linux</td></tr>
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<h1 id="addinfo">Additional Information</h1>
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<h1 id="knownissueinfo">Known Issues</h1>
<div class="helpdoc-text"><p>For upcoming features and bugfixes, visit <a href="http://ngskintools.com/v2/roadmap"target="_blank">ngSkinTools v2 public roadmap</a>.</p></div>
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<h1 id="contactinfo">Contact</h1>
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<div>
<div class="">Company Name: Viktoras Makauskas</div>
<div class="">Company URL: <a href="http://www.ngskintools.com/" target="_blank">http://www.ngskintools.com</a></div>
<div class="">Support Contact: <a href="mailto:support@ngskintools.com">support@ngskintools.com</a></div>
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<h1 id="authorinfo">Author/Company Information</h1>
<div class="helpdoc-text">Viktoras Makauskas</div>
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<h1 id="supportinfo">Support Information</h1>
<div class="helpdoc-text"><p>If you have a problem, a question, a feature request, let me know. Your feedback is what drives the project forward!<strong>&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p><strong>Documentation</strong></p>
<p>Features, tutorials &amp; FAQ available at <a href="http://ngskintools.com/v2/" target="_blank">ngSkinTools official website</a>.&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Contact in private</strong></p>
<p>Use the <a href="http://ngskintools.com/contact/" target="_blank">online contact form</a> or email to <a href="mailto:support@ngskintools.com">support@ngskintools.com</a>.</p></div>
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<h1 id="versionhistoryinfo">Version History</h1>
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<th>Version Number</th>
<th>Version Description</th>
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2.0.24
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<td style="white-space: pre-wrap;">2.0.23 (2021-Mar-12)
* Fixed: stylus pressure is not updated during the stroke;
* Fixed: Maya crashes when smoothing an empty layer with "adjust existing influences only";
* Fixed: (regression) UI is not opening on macOS;
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2.0.23
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</td>
<td style="white-space: pre-wrap;">2.0.23 (2021-Mar-10)
* Added: adjustable brush size: don't reset to zero when changing brush size in the viewport.
* Added: randomize influence colors in paint/display settings;
* Added: layers on/off "eye" button in layers tree UI;
* Fixed: ngSkinTools will not modify skinCluster's `normalizeWeights` value anymore; for performance boost, you still
can disable skinCluster's normalization by setting `normalizeWeights=None`. In "normalizeWeights:interactive"
skinCluster mode, Maya will no longer complain that "The weight total would have exceeded 1.0". ngSkinTools will try
extra hard to normalize each vertex to a perfect 1.0;
* Fixed: UI is not displayed correctly on high DPI displays when UI scaling is enabled in Maya;
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<td>
<p>
2.0.22
</p>
</td>
<td style="white-space: pre-wrap;">2.0.22 (2021-Feb-06)
Added: convenience tool for adding influences to existing skin clusters. Select influences, target mesh and select “Tools | Add Influence”;
Fixed: weights will now display properly when viewport option “use default material” is turned on;
Added: (v1 feature) Limit max influences per vertex before writing to skin cluster;
Added: (v1 feature) Prune small weights before writing to skin cluster.
2.0.21 (2021-Jan-11)
Added: copy/paste vertex weights between different selections (tab “tools” - “copy component weights/paste average component weights”);
Added: tool “fill transparency” - for all empty vertices in a layer, assign weights from closest non-empty vertex;
Added: “duplicate layer” operation;
Added: “Merge layers” operation: combine selected layers into one.
2.0.20 (2020-Dec-02)
Fixed: Linux: crashing on startup
2.0.19 (2020-Nov-28)
Added: influences mapping in mirror screen will now allow matching joints by DG connections; if symmetrical joints are linked between themselves with message connections, ngSkinTools will be able to leverage that information when mirroring weights;
Added: symmetry mesh: an option to provide an alternative mesh for calculating vertex mapping for mirroring;
Fixed: deleting visibility node can crash Maya sometimes, e.g. switching to component mode (F8) while paint tool is active
2.0.18 (2020-Nov-20)
Added: “use all joints” option for “weights from closest joint” tool; few internal optimizations to speedup operation;
Added: “weights from closest joint” option: create a new layer
Fixed: “weights from closest joint”: the tool is only using joints as spots, but not as segments;
Fixed: after “weights from closest joint” operation influences list is not refreshed;
Fixed: “weights from closest joint”: “assign” button sometimes disabled;
2.0.17 (2020-Nov-19)
Fixed: “resume in workspace” error while opening UI
2.0.16 (2020-Nov-15)
Added: skin data will be compressed for ngSkinTools data nodes, which should substantially reduce file size for scenes with lots of skinning layers;
Added: paint mode intensity sliders are now exponential: “smooth”, “add” and “sharpen” sliders will now be more precise for lower values, and “scale” mode will allow for more precision when setting high values.
2.0.15 (2020-Nov-10)
Added: new “Set Weights” tab contains tools to apply weights to vertex/edge/polygon selection instead of painting.
Added: a new option for smooth tool - “only adjust existing vertex influences”; when this is turned on, the smooth tool will prevent influences weights spreading across the surface
Fixed: layer mirror effects correctly saved/loaded in files;
Fixed: mask mirror effect was not correctly used by layer blending engine
2.0.14 (2020-Oct-04)
Fixed: occasional crashes when using mirror effect on layers;
Additional stability fixes.
2.0.13 (2020-Oct-04)
Fixed: minor bug in 2.0.12 blocks UI from opening;
2.0.12 (2020-Oct-03)
Added: option to view used influences in influences list;
Added: hide “DQ weights” channel in influences list if skin cluster skinning method is not set to “Weight Blended”;
2.0.11 (2020-Oct-01)
Fixed: broken Linux builds
2.0.10 (2020-Sep-26)
Added: pressing “f” while painting focuses viewport camera to current paint target; for joints and other influences, the current joint pivot is used as camera interest point; when current paint target is a mask, viewport centers around painted values;
Fixed: influence mapping UI error if some influences are no joints;
2.0.9 (2020-Sep-11)
Fixed: undo paint crashing Maya;
Fixed: incorrect brush behavior with multiple viewports open;
Fixed: incorrect mesh display / VP2 transparency setting sensitive;
Fixed: clearing selection while painting does not update the display of current mesh;</td>
</tr>
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