In Zoo 2.6.4 Hive Auto-Rigger (Alpha) supports timeline space switching and change rotation order over a time range, and improves game engine support.
VRay and Maya’s native shader support has been added to many of our tools including:
– Shader Presets
– Shader Manager
– Randomize Shaders
– Convert Shaders (previous version)
– Shader Swap
Shader Manager and Shader Presets now support metalness and emission.
Shader Manager now can change multiple shaders at once, and the undo queue is working correctly again.
VRay and Maya can now be set as global rendererer types for a full list of our Renderer support per tool see the renderer support GoogleSheet.
A new tool Change Rotation Order allows animators to change the gimbal rotation to avoid gimbal issues. This tool has timeline sampling and recommends the best order throughout an animation.
We’ve upgraded our Uninstance hotkey which is compatible with uninstancing Zoo Instance Mirror and instanced groups.
Many other bug fixes and improvements.
Enhancements – Hive Auto-Rigger
– Space Switching – Frame Range: Marking-menu space switching, keys only and bake options added.
– Switch To Ik/Fk – Bake Range: Marking-menu IK/FK switch, bake every frame added
– Change Rotation Order: Marking-menu change rotation order with recommended options added.
– Game Engine Export: Joints have no namespaces for game engine support & live link.
Hive’s right-click new IK/FK, space-switching & Change Rotation Order timeline options.
Bug Fixes – Hive Auto-Rigger
– While renaming a component the deform joints now rename correctly
– Select Child in the marking menu maintains current selection.
New Tool – Change Rotation Order
Change Rotation Order is a new tool that allows animators to change the gimbal rotation to avoid gimbal issues. Previously this tool was found in the Animation Toolbox and we’ve now added extra baking and time-range options. The new drop-down menu samples the frame-range to highlight the preferred rotation orders with the least amount of gimballing.
Change Rotation Order samples the animated timeline to find the top recommended orders.
Enhancements – Shader Manager
Shader Manager has had a large upgrade to include new functionality.
– Shader Support: VRay and Maya default shader support added.
– New Attribute Support: Support for metalness, diffuse roughness, and emission added.
– Change Multiple Shaders: UI can change multiple shaders at once.
– All Shaders: Available in the drop-down menus.
– Selected Shader: Auto-detects the shader type and changes the selected shader if supported.
– Transfer, Copy, Paste: All shader types including unsupported.
Shader Presets now supports Maya’s native shaders and VRays VRayMtl. Compact UI shown here.
Enhancements – Shader Presets
Shader Presets now adds support for:
– Shader Support: VRay and Maya default shader support added.
– New Attribute Support: Support for metalness, diffuse roughness, and emission added.
– Selected Shader: Auto-detects the shader type and changes the selected shader if supported.
Shader Presets now supports Maya’s native shaders and VRays VRayMtl
Enhancements – Randomize Shaders
Randomize Shaders now adds support for:
– Shader Support: VRay and Maya default shader support added.
– Selected Shader: Auto-detects the shader type and can change multiple shader types at once.
Randomize Shaders we’ve now added Maya’s default shader and VRayMtl support.
Enhancements – Shader Swap
Shader Swap now adds preset suffixing for all our supported shader types:
– aiStandardSurface (ARN)
– VRayMtl (VRAY)
– redshiftMaterial (RS)
– pxrSurface (PXR)
– standardSurface (STRD)
– lambert (LMBT)
– blinn (BLNN)
– phong (PHNG)
– phongE (PNGE)
Enhancements – Added VRay and Maya Renderers
VRay and Maya are now available as renderers in the Zoo Preferences Window > General and can be set as default renderers.
Note: Some tools do not support all renderer types and will hide the unsupported types. For a full list of renderer support see this GoogleSheet.
Enhancements – Fix Viewport
Fix Viewport’s Create/Reparent Light button will now default to the Preset Medium: Soft 1K preset while building lights for the first time. The create button will also switch on textures, lights, anti-aliasing, AO.
Pressing the Create/Reparent Light for the second time with lights already created will reparent the viewport light setup to the current camera/viewport.
The Fix Viewport create button now uses the Preset Medium: Soft 1K preset and turns on textures, lights, AA and AO.
Enhancements – Uninstance Hotkey
We’ve upgraded our Uninstance hotkey which is now compatible with uninstancing:
– Zoo Instance Mirror: Zoo Tools mirror instance type, objects are unparented and renamed.
– Instanced Groups: Removes the group if children are selected.
– Regular Instanced Geo: Maintains names and connections/keyframes.
The uninstance hotkey ( ctrl alt shift i ) will also intelligently uninstance groups and Zoo Mirror Instance setups.
Enhancements – Open Tool Hotkeys
New open tool hotkeys have been added to the Hotkey Window but are not assigned to hotkeys.
Missing hotkeys added:
– Open Select (hotkey)
– Open Replace Shapes (hotkey)
– Open Motion Path Rig (hotkey)
– Open Rigging Miscellaneous (hotkey)
– Open Matrix Tool (hotkey)
– Open Manage Nodes Plugins (hotkey)
– Open Focus Puller (hotkey)
– Open Change Rotation Orders (hotkey)
– Open Render Object Display (hotkey)
– Open Convert Shaders (hotkey)
– Open Randomize Shaders (hotkey)
Find the Open Tool Hotkeys here in the Hotkey Editor. Here is the Matrix Tool hotkey.
Enhancements – Maya Shaders
Maya Shaders now support Maya and VRay. Selecting these renderers in the icon dropdown button will filter out all other renderer types.
Name filtering is based on the suffixing of each thumbnail icon.
– *_vray
– *_maya
– *_arnold
– *_redshift
– *_renderman
Maya Shaders can be filtered by *_vray and *_maya suffixing.
Enhancements – Maya Scenes
Maya Scenes now support Maya and VRay. Selecting these renderers in the icon dropdown button will filter out all other renderer types.
Name filtering is based on the suffixing of each thumbnail icon.
– *_vray
– *_maya
– *_arnold
– *_redshift
– *_renderman
Maya Scenes can be filtered filtered by *_vray and *_maya suffixing.
Tool Change – Model Assets Rename
The tool previously named Model Assets has now been renamed to Alembic Assets to better describe the tool.
Menu Change – Model Assets
The Model Assets menu has had a slight reshuffle. Maya Scenes now sits above Alembic Assets .
Menu Change – Shader Icon Order
The Shader Tools menu has been reshuffled. The tools are now ordered:
– Maya Shaders
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– Shader Presets
– Shader Manager
– Convert Shaders
– Randomize Shaders
– Shader Swap By Suffix
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– Displacement Manager
– Create Mattes AOVs
Change – VRayMtl & Glossiness/Roughness
VRay Material will now convert and build with it’s default mode being Glossiness and not Roughness.
Shader Manager will always set the VRay Material shader type depending on it’s Roughness checkbox. If off will set as Glossiness if on will set as the inverted Roughness value. On create the default Roughness checkbox will be off and so Glossiness is used as the default specular type.
Roughness and Glossiness are the same attribute type with their values inverted. Similar to Opacity and Transparency.
Bug Fix: Light Marking Menu Hotkey Removed
Our old Light Marking Menu has not been ported yet into Zoo2. It was giving errors so the hotkey has been removed until it is ported properly from Zoo1.
Bug Fix: Shader Manager Undo Queue
A bug regarding Shader Manager breaking the undo queue has been fixed.
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Buy Zoo Tools.
To see all tools go to the Zoo 2 Information Page.
Registered users can download from the Zoo 2 Install Page.
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