Getting triggers to work with Maya
by David Barr · in Artist Corner · 07/28/2005 (4:23 am) · 3 replies
I am trying to add triggers to a player run animation sequence to get footstep sounds working.
I have followed the docs, the exporter dump file says there are triggers and 2 triggers are reported in showtool pro but they dont seem to trigger anything in the engine.
Has anyone else managed to get footstep triggers working and, if so, what values were used?
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated :)
I have followed the docs, the exporter dump file says there are triggers and 2 triggers are reported in showtool pro but they dont seem to trigger anything in the engine.
Has anyone else managed to get footstep triggers working and, if so, what values were used?
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated :)
#2
07/30/2005 (2:37 am)
Oh, that's interesting. I know in MAX the sequence has to have "ground transform" enabled for the triggers to work. Is there not a similar setting on the sequences in Maya? If it really does require you to have keyframes on the bounding box that should probably be added to the docs.
#3
It could do with some mention in the docs as most animations (except death) will work out fine if you just parent the bounds to the model - from the docs -
This doesnt seem to turn on ground transform for death or triggers though.
After having the same problem before with death animations it struck me this morning that I should try keyframing bounds to get triggers working too.
07/30/2005 (4:18 am)
Jeff - The ground transform only seems to work in Maya if you keyframe the bounds. I dont know of a separate setting for it.It could do with some mention in the docs as most animations (except death) will work out fine if you just parent the bounds to the model - from the docs -
Quote:
Ground animation (ground transform) is based on the animation of the bounding box. For example, if you want to export a running person, you would place the bounding box around the person at time 0, with the origin of the box at the persons feet. As the person runs, you would animate the bounding box to keep pace with the person.
The easiest way to do this would be to parent constrain the bounding box to the hips (or root) of the character, and set it to only constrain along the Maya world axis (not the bounding box axis) corresponding to the forward and backwards motion of the character.
This doesnt seem to turn on ground transform for death or triggers though.
After having the same problem before with death animations it struck me this morning that I should try keyframing bounds to get triggers working too.
Torque Owner David Barr
Viola Interactive Ltd
For anyone else with a similar problem you need to have keyframes on the bounding box. My original run animation had the bounding box simply parented to the model which works for animations but doesnt work with triggers.