Skip to content

2022.02.01

Highlight for this release is Quality of Life!


Showcase

Let's start with the good stuff.

Pounce

Our Manikin is stuck!

Batman Writes

A behind-the-scenes from Jason's cool constraint setup.


Kinematic & Dynamic

Also known as "Animated" and "Simulated"

Marker behaviour has been simplified.

Groups are now either Kinematic - for fully animated, no physics involved - or Dynamic for having things affected by gravity and contacts with other Markers.

In the above example, I'm alternating between Kinematic and Dynamic for the entire character.

Changed

As part of this simplification, two things have changed.

  1. Initial State was removed
  2. Pose Match was renamed to Dynamic

Initial State can be achieved with Dynamic and a Pose Stiffness of 0.

And like before, individual markers can be overridden to be either Kinematic or Dynamic. When set to Inherit it continues to use whatever value was found in the group.

..speaking of which!


Group

In the previous version, a group was automatically created whenever you assign to a connected series of controls.

image

This release enables you to group standalone markers too, and to retroactively group markers in any way you please.

New Group

Select some markers, put them in a group.

Move To Group

Select one or more markers, along with a destination group, and move them.

Group on Assign

When assigning markers, you are now also able to pick which group to put it into, or whether to make a new group. Or no group!


Lollipop 2.0

Lollipops now feature Marker and Group attributes in the Channel Box; less clicks!

Customisable

Rotate and scale the resulting lollipops to fit your rig and workflow.

Retroactive Lollipops

Should you have markers without a lollipop, assign them afterwards using the Lollipop menu item. This is also where you can customise which attributes should appear on them.

Pro tip

The Use Proxy Attributes option makes attributes editable both on the Lollipop and on the original Marker. The downside however is that they make life in the Graph Editor less pleasant. 🤔

With Proxy Attributes Without Proxy Attributes
image image
image image


Quality of Life

Some improvements and reshufflings to make your life more complete. 🥰


Robust Recording

There hasn't yet been any rig not supported by Ragdoll, until last week when @mandala got in touch with a new challenge. A rig made with an rigging system plug-in called Contour.

Recording this rig results in cycle warnings, presumably because part of how it operates depends on viewport updates.

In this update, there is a (default) Nice and Steady option for recording which ensures the viewport stays up-to-date with the dependency graph, and that did the trick!

image


Match By Name

Importing markers onto a character in a different group, or a different character altogether, could be tricky since their hierarchies would differ.

There is now an option to find a matching control by name rather than its full path.

In this example, the character has a different parent group than when it was exported, changing all of the full paths to each control.


Scale Replace

In the case of scaled markers with a replaced mesh, this happened.

Before

But no longer!

After


Offline Activation Wizard

The offline activation process has now been streamlined; no longer requiring an email conversation back and forth. It should take some of our load off, whilst at the same time enabling you to offline activate when we are sleeping. 😅

Activation

Deactivation


Offline Trial Notification

Whenever someone attempts to trial Ragdoll, but their machine is not connected to the internet, they would receive a message about how their Trial has expired.. Even though it was never activated in the first place!

This has now been fixed.

image


World Translate Visualisation

The translation component of the World Pose Space wasn't very visible before, now it is! It's also drawn using the color of the Marker it's associated with, to aid in figuring out what it's actually affecting. And also make things a little nicer to look at.

Before

After


Record Leaving Joints Behind

Sometimes, Ragdoll could leave some remains after recording your simulation. This has now been fixed.

image


Existing Constraints Deleted on Record

Under rare circumstances, it's possible to assign a marker onto a control that's been constrained. It wouldn't make sense to record onto this control; because what should you expect to have happen? The control is either animated or it is constrained.

At the moment, this constraint is also recorded and once complete your original constraint is deleted. If possible! If the constraint is from a referenced file, then you'll instead see an error. 🤔


Record Range Options

The Record UI has seen some updates. It used to always record your current playback range, but can now be customised.

Record To Selected Range

You can now drag-select on the timeline to record only that specific region.

Record Full Range

The minimum and maximum range on your timeline, beyond what is played back.

Record Playback Range

Record only the range currently played back, this is the default and current behaviour.

Customise Range

And finally, provide your own values. These values, along with the option of which range to pick from, is remembered alongside your Maya preferences just like all other Ragdoll options.


Existing Constraints

In the rare circumstance of:

  1. Assigning to a constrained control
  2. That is also kinematic
  3. And running Record

You would find yourself with a missing constraint. As it happens, when Maya encounters an existing constraint it won't actually create a new constraint when you try and constrain again. Instead, it will append to this constraint.

As a result, since Recording constrains your character to the simulation and then bakes the keyframes, once it was complete and went on to clean up any new constraints it had made, it also deleted yours.

This has now been fixed.


Manipulator & Multiple Viewports

The Ragdoll Manipulator didn't like multiple viewports being present at the same time, resulting in a similar situation as 2021.12.15.

Ragdoll now draws and responds to the manipulator in the currently active viewport.


Plug-in Unload and New Scene

Sometimes, especially on a floating licence, you'd like to release your licence such that another artist can pick it up.

To do that, you can either go to the Ragdoll UI and Drop Lease for a floating licence of Deactivate for a node-locked licence. Or, you can simply unload the plug-in.

As it happens, if you did then Ragdoll would clear your scene. Without confirmation. 😵

This has now been fixed. You'll still need to ensure no Ragdoll nodes are present in your scene though, like any normal plug-in.


Delete from Selection

A new menu item has been added to delete physics only from the current selection.

Pro tip I

This was possible using the Use Selection option within the Delete Physics option dialog.

Pro tip II

Markers can also be manually deleted in the Outliner, they are DG nodes.

Pro tip III

Another way of deleting an individual marker is:

  1. Select your assigned control
  2. Select Marker in Channel Box
  3. Deselect control
  4. Hit Delete or Backspace on your keyboard

Pro tip IV

Yet another way of deleting an individual marker is:

  1. Select your assigned control
  2. Select Marker in Channel Box
  3. Ctrl + Right-click on marker
  4. Select Delete Node


Minor Tweaks

  • Limits are now included when importing physics
  • Drive Space Custom appears under in the channel box when Drive Space = Custom
  • Pin Constraint now visible in Wireframe mode
  • Pin Constraint visible both with solver offset and at the origin
  • Distance and Pin Constraints can now be hidden via the Outliner
  • The Include Kinematic option for record has been fixed
  • Python API: The opts argument of api.reinterpret is repaired