Our recent patch update includes an update to the Tween Machine and the Hive Autorigger.
The Tween Machine has a new hotkey, popup window behaviour, and supports curve selection.
The Hive Autorigger supports Unreal Engine’s IK joints for hands, feet and guns.
Hive is now more stable than ever, with numerous smaller bugs fixed. We are committed to fixing anything that may disrupt your workflow. Please don’t hesitate to let us know of any issues you encounter.
Enhancement: Tween Machine
There have been a few updates to Tween Machine.
The tool now prioritises the selected curve, followed by the channel box selection. If no attribute selection is made, it will apply to all keyframes.
A new hotkey has been added to Zoo Tools – “alt+g”. This hotkey opens a popup window for the tween machine at the mouse cursor’s location. Release the slider to close the window.
Tween Machine works on selected curves and with a new popup mode and hotkey “alt g”.
To upgrade or install the Zoo Tools Hotkeys, open the Zoo Preferences Window > Zoo Hotkey Editor > Update (or install) Zoo Hotkeys. (see below). Please see the Tween Machine Page for more information on installing a custom hotkey.
Enhancement: Hotkeys Search And Find
We have included Maya’s Search Engine feature in the standard Zoo Tools package. While the usual hotkey is ctrl+f, it has been modified to ctrl+shift+alt+f for Zoo Tools. You can also find the search in the left toolbar with the magnifying glass icon.
Maya’s Search Engine, ctrl+f has been added to Zoo Tools on ctrl+shift+alt+f.
You can open our windows and other Zoo commands by switching to mel. Note the Zoo Hotkeys must be installed (see below)
Use Zoo Tools commands by switching to mel. Note Zoo Hotkeys must be installed.
To upgrade or install the Zoo Tools Hotkeys, open the Zoo Preferences Window > Zoo Hotkey Editor > Update (or install) Zoo Hotkeys.
Update the Hotkeys Preferences Window > Zoo Hotkey Editor > Update (or install) Zoo Hotkeys.
Enhancements: Hive Auto Rigger
– A hand/foot build script has been added to the UE5_mannequin template. This script adds extra joints for hand and feet IK in the Unreal Engine.
Hive supports Unreal Engine’s IK joints for hands and feet by default. Turn Ik Joints off if you don’t require this feature.
Hive now with support for UE5 Ik hand, feet, and hand_gun joints.
– The default pole-vector distance has been updated on several templates to align with the new pole-vector setup.
– The default distance for auto pole-vector on vChain, arm, and leg components has been set to 20.
– Hive UI refresh speeds have been improved.
Bug Fixes: Hive Auto Rigger
The Hive Auto Rigger has had several bug fixes.
– We have resolved an issue with bendy joints causing them to bend in the wrong direction.
– We have resolved an issue with bendy joints that were causing unexpected changes in alignment.
– An issue with right-click animator IK/FK matching, which resulted in the deletion of animation after the switching timeframe, has been resolved.
– Issues with right-click animator IK/FK matching have been fixed for frames where the component is already in the correct IK or FK state.
– A correction has been made on the UE template wherein the spine root name changed from “hipsSwing” to “pelvis”.
– To ensure backward compatibility, we’ve added a fix for older rigs that don’t have the new “auto pole vector” attributes.
– Naming configurations have been added based on the hiveType key, providing greater flexibility for customized configurations.
– A solution has been added to the randomly flipping alignment issue of FK Components.
– Hive UI update issues have been resolved while mirroring components.
Backend Note
We’ve refactored some minor backend code that may affect studio-specific custom packages if you are developing with Zoo Tools; please let us know if you are having any issues.
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Buy Zoo Tools.
To see all tools go to the Zoo 2 Information Page.
Registered users can download and upgrade from the Zoo 2 Install Page.
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Hi) Is it possible to add a shot mask for playblasts?(like in zurbrigg advanced playblast)
Yes, this has been requested quite a bit, but it breaks our rule of no C++ plugins, which requires a lot more effort on our part to compile plugins for each version of Maya and OS, and it also means we’d need to support custom nodes too unfortunately. So at the moment, we won’t be adding this functionality and Zurrbrgg is the way there.
And it will be very usefull to add first person skeleton (hands) for UE 🙂
That is a good idea, and I’ll pass that suggestion onto Dave.
Ik joints, yeah i was doing it manually one by one) good update