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Animator Tools

This is an animation tool that can do stuff like:

  • select ctrls
  • fk2ik switch
  • space switch
  • mirror ctrl poses/animations
  • Biped Motion Capture
  • Motion Path (experimental)

For Animators..

Alt text

Video

The best way to see how it works is watching the first 1min 45seconds from this video from the start.

Fk2Ik Switch

Video

Whatch it in the video from here

Isolated Menu

If you just want this switch without the whole UI, that's possible and you can see here how it looks.

Space Switch

The space switch button can help animators to switch between spaces.

Video

Whatch it in the video from here

Isolated Menu

If you just want this switch without the whole UI, that's possible and you can see here how it looks.

Mirror

Video

Watch how to mirror ctrl poses or animation here

For Riggers..

Riggers mainly need to create the elements and jpg files. Watch the video from here to see how to do that.

Custom Picker File Location

In the video we are just putting the picker files into the tool directory. While that's totally valid, sometimes you might want to put them into a different location.
Use the Environment Variable KANGAROO_PICKER_PATH to specify a different path.

More picker tabs per character

This feature was added recently, that's why it's not shown in the video yet.
By default (as shown in the video) you just have 1 pair of files, such as:

mainCharacter.elements
mainCharacter.jpg
But you can add an extra one, for example like this:
mainCharacter.elements
mainCharacter.jpg
mainCharacter_face.elements
mainCharacter_face.jpg
And then you'll have 2 picker tabs for that character.

Isolated Menus

Sometimes animators don't want the whole UI, but they just want some menus. Below are some python codes that you can for example add to a shelf button. I'll then open small switch menus from those buttons.

Switching Spaces:
To get this menu, run the python lines below:
Alt text

import kangarooAnimation.KangarooMatchTools as KangarooMatchTools; 
KangarooMatchTools.spaceSwitchMenu()

Switching between Fk and Ik:
Alt text
Run those lines to get that menu:

import kangarooAnimation.KangarooMatchTools as KangarooMatchTools; 
KangarooMatchTools.humanLimbsSwitchMenu()

Tool Installation

The tool is installed by default if you've installed Kangaroo-Builder as shown in the Getting Started page (The first part is enough - no need to setup things like assetsLocal or servers). Animators can just open it from the same install that you have.

But in case they don't have access to it, all you need to give them is the kangarooAnimation folder.
Alt text This folder is isolated and is not linking to any other libraries.

If animators have that folder sourced, they can open the UI with those Python lines:

import kangarooAnimation.KangarooAnimTool as KangarooAnimTool; 
KangarooAnimTool.showUI(False)
Or they can run the lines shown in Isolated Menus