Posts

  • Implementing MASH in a Character Rig

    A few months ago, I was doing some research into solutions for automating some secondary motion on our characters. One path led me down watching some MASH videos on YouTube. Ian Waters’ channel is full of great stuff. It got me wondering if a MASH network could be used in a character rig to drive some dynamic motion where needed. Well, turns out it can! I got back into it last week and did a test which got a good amount of interest on Twitter, so I decided to do a quick (and probably a bit dirty) writeup on the subject.


  • Animation Layer Bug in Maya

    So, been fighting this one for a while now. There’s this nasty little bug in Maya 2017 (and I believe it exists in previous versions as well) where animation files that have a referenced rig AND animation layers will randomly save invalid connectAttr calls that cause animation layer nodes to connect to themselves (output connects to one if its own input attributes rather than the proper control). This creates cycles, Maya screams at us, and everyone is sad. Worse yet, this bug doesn’t demonstrate itself until someone re-opens the file and the scene is reconstructed and the faulty connectAttr call reconnects the node to itself, removing the proper animCurve connection.


  • Accessing State Weights From Code

    Recently, I’ve be doing a lot of work to optimize animation blueprints in UE4 by moving all of the event graph functionality into C++. One particular problem I ran into was that I was unable to ‘Fast Path Enable’ several blend nodes due to their alpha values being driven by state weights from various state machines within the graph.


  • It Lives!

    Alright, after far too long I’ve finally got the site up and running in proper form now. Sure, it’s been “live” in some form of disrepair or another for far too long. Primarily, it’s served as a sandbox for me to learn more about web development. Furthermore, it’s served as a prime example as to why I’m glad I’m not a web developer for a living.


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