Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Check to make sure you have not missed any controllers, visible or otherwise, before you
continue. It's best to do this first in the Outliner because each object will be clearly listed.
In addition, go through each icon in the view panel, since this is how the animator will in-
teract with the character.
Character Sets
Ourrigsareiscleanandtidynowandcanbeanimatedeasily(andsafely)—butthey'restill
quite complex in construction and don't allow for any quick and convenient way to access
the character as a whole. What we can do now is define a series of character sets for the
characters.Acharactersetstoresalltheattributesassociatedwiththecharacter'sanimation
in one central place. The animator can then access these attributes quickly and easily in or-
der to edit the character as a whole.
AnotherbenefitofcharactersetsisthatyoucanusetheminconjunctionwiththeTraxEdit-
or (Window > Animation Editors > Trax Editor) to store the animation data in clips . These
can then be exported and stored for future use, even on other characters. You'll find more
discussion of the Trax Editor in Chapter 16 , Animating for Games .
In addition to the main character set, you can have subcharacter sets that lie beneath the
main one. These are useful when you need to divide up your character. For our Kila and
Grae characters, we'll set up a subcharacter set for the upper body animation and another
forthelowerbodyanimation.Wecanthenexportandimportanimationontothesesubchar-
actersetsseparately,enablingthemixingandmatchingofvariousanimationstocreatenew
ones. We can even have another separate subcharacter set for Grae's wings.
So let's first create the main character set for Kila.
1. Go to Character > Create Character Set and open the options seen in Figure 15.6 .
This is where you will give the character set a name and ask Maya to include some
attributes in its initial creation.
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