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Projects - Golem
Overview Golem is a set of roughly 20 plugins for Cinema 4D XL 7.3+. These plugins were written to specifically aide in character animation. They are the product of over a year of reasearch and development on my part. They have been used by seasoned animators and first semester animation students, this variety of testers allowed for the creation of well thought-out "battle tested" tools. Golem has been integrated into my animation workflow and I hope that it will soon become a part of yours. The set is divided into 2 types of plugins: Constraints and Utilities. Each constraint and utility was created with the ideas of power and ease-of-use in mind. Constraints The constraints form a complete and useful system for defining relationships and restraints among parts of your characters. These relationships and restraints allow you to simplify both the posing and animation process. They allow for the creation of character rigs with complex behavior but simple manipulation. Golem Constraints give you the freedom to animate the way that you want to animate. Utilities The utilities are a number of useful tools that simplify or automate some of the more tedious parts of the animation process. They range in use from the automatic creation and assignment of vertex maps to the ability to view animations in step-interpolation mode (used commonly in programs like Maya and Hash 3D for pose-to-pose animation). Plugin List Constraints: Possible Uses: Aim objects at multiple targets, smoothly transition between targets UpVectors, automatically adjust the bank rotations of an object for improved targeting Prevents Gimbal Lock, freeing you to animate your character without dealing with technical limitations Automatic Squash and Stretch, important aspects of animation are much simpler to deal with Automated Muscle Simulation, automatic flexing of muscles allowing for impressive life-like deformations Time Delay, great for simple secondary motion like jiggling bellies and whiplash effects Ties any Position/Scale/Rotation of a target object to any motion of another object, Perfect for mechanical simulations and anything that needs exact relationships between objects Keeps effectors within a reachable range, you no longer have to worry about your character's feet ripping off their legs or ugly mesh crimping Keeps feet above the floor at all times, preventing feet from slipping through the floor is important for believable animation Allows characters to pick up and set down objects outside of their hierarchies, many times easier than manually animating an object to following another or juggling objects and visibility track tricks. Progressive Breaking of Joints for tails and spines, one of the keys to animation is time-delayed movements, this process is now easily automated Seperate rotation of upper body from lower body and head from neck, no need to counter-rotate the head when you adjust your character's shoulders Control where knees and elbows point in IK chains, IK can be unpredictable... this affords the ultimate control over your IK solution Automatically paint weight maps for polygonal characters, one of the most tedious aspects of rigging is painting vertex maps for all of your bones Golem will get you 90% done in seconds |
