Miarmy Crowd Simulation Documentation (English)

Rig Requirements

There are some specs for the Maya Rig if we want to successfully convert it into Miarmy Original Agent (OA).

1. Single Chain Joint Structure

Make sure your rig is a single chain rigging system.

Single chain rigging system means each of the joint (except root) must have a joint parent. No matter how many children nodes under each joint, and how many constrains and IKs, just make sure each bone has a joint parent. 

Important Different

Notice the following 2 pictures

  1. Tthe left one is an example of single bone chain, because each joint (except root) in structure has a joint parent, although joint 2 has several non-joint children.
  2. However, the right picture is not a single bone chain (there are multiple chains). Please notice the parent of joint 3 is locator 2. The locator 2 breaks the chain

(Left) single chain rig; (right) non single chain rig (multiple chain)

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If you bone chain is broken, there will be 2 methods to fix it, and we're going to introduce them respectively.

  1. Try to use the Maya connect joint tool to connect the joint together (if it's very easy to fix)
  2. Reconstruct the rig with Miarmy Re-Rig tool


Fix Bone Chain by Maya Tool

You can find the tool by following pictures, and click the little box icon on the right side the menu item and then set to "Parent joint" mode.

Wrong Mode

If we select and use "connect joint" mode, it won't success


Connect joint by connect tool with "Parent joint" mode.

Fix Bone Chain by Miarmy Re-Rig Tool

When the rig is too hard to fix, you can reconstruct a new bone chain with our new tool in Miarmy 7 without breaking your older rig (Read More)


2. Character Orientations

The rig and animation should orient to positive Z axis (+Z) because all of Miarmy engine algorithms and Actionn system are using the +Z axis.

Facing to +Z axis


3. Joint Scale

In most of cases, please do not contain the "scale" value on joint, or it will bring more troubles if not deal with it carefully.

Except there are some special needs in your project, so that you can use the scale-based stretch and squash animation, please refer our scale bone chapter.

keep scale 1 is best choice in regular scene


4. Joint Naming

We highly recommend to make the name of each bone unique because the repeated name may bring some unpredictable problems.

Non-unique name is no problem in most case but we are not sure is there further problem in some features of coming future. 

Please take a look at the following 2 pictures, the left one contains some joints which name is not unique whereas the right bones are all unique name.


(Left) joint name non unique; (right) joint name unique


Repeated Name

Once you select a joint with non-unique name, the printed name of this object will be full name with "|" sign in script editor.



Select the non-unique name of joint

(Optional, Only for Physics) Joint with Length

If you want to apply dynamics in your simulation, please make sure each bone has a length, otherwise, once you enable dynamic for the agent originate from this rig, your dynamic system will unstable, even might crash Maya


 
The joint2 and joint3 overlapped and the joint2 doesn't have length



(Green) correct joint2 with length (red) joint2 and joint3 overlapped without any length








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