Zoo Tools Pro 2.8.3 is now available with updates to the Hive Autorigger with bendy quad-leg controls, additional animal templates, and various bug fixes!
The Hive quad leg components now offer complete bendy control for all quad leg-related rigs, including insects, dogs, cats, horses, and mech robots. Enable the Bendy setting in the components section of the Hive window.
Hive’s Quad Leg now comes with uber-bendy controls for leg deformation.
We’ve also added new dinosaur, canine, spider, and werewolf templates (scroll down).
The canine is a good starting point for dogs and wolves.
Hive – Quad Leg Bendy
The Hive Quad Leg component now has bendy and auto-bendy settings! Bendy is compatible with both spider leg and animal quad leg formations.
To add bendy to the Quad Leg, add it in the components settings window.
Build a quad leg and add bendy settings.
Once the leg has been built, show the bendy controls via the visibility settings in the channel box. To access these settings, simply choose any quad leg control.
Bendy Settings
Quad bendy is similar to our Leg and FK bendy settings. Quad Leg Bendy settings include:
– The Primary Bendy controls give manual controls over the bendiness.
Primary Bendy Controls are used to manually tailor poses.
– Secondary controls are located at both the knee and ankle. Use the controls to stretch or dampen knee pop.
Secondary Bendy Controls, stretch legs or minimize knee pop.
– The tertiary bendy controls provide more precise control over the bend.
Tertiary Bendy Controls provide fine tune control.
– The Auto Bendy Setting feature automatically maintains roundness as the legs bend with pose changes.
Auto-Bendy automatically rounds the legs and reacts to pose changes.
Hive – New Creature Templates
– Added the Allosaurus Template (Demo Folder)
– Added the Dino_Carnivore Template (Animal Folder)
– Added the Canine Template (Animal Folder)
– Added the Insect Spider Template (Animal Folder)
– Added the Werewolf Template (Fantasy Folder)
The canine is a good starting point for dogs and wolves.
The Insect Spider template.
The Dino Carnivore template.
The werewolf template is a human with quad legs.
The allosaurus template matches our demo rig, Allosaurus Mannequin.
Hive – Important Change
Important: Temporary changes to the World Up Vector now affect the vChain, arm, leg, and quadLeg. To align the direction of the pole vectors and planar orientation of the arms and legs, please use the arrow guide on the worldUpVec control.
To set the direction of the pole vector, you can right-click and select ‘align’.
The orientation will interactively align in future releases as the guides are adjusted.
Align the arms and legs with the world-up arrow. (Temporary 2.8.3 change)
Hive – Changes
– The Quad Spine has been adjusted so that the Y-axis point faces upwards.
– The Quad Spine has a new control look.
Quad Spine Now orients Y up and control changes too.
Hive – Bug Fixes
– An issue regarding FkComponent not being properly constrained is resolved. The component will now be constrained even if its parent component has no joints.
– The minimum and maximum values of the “sideBank” and “heelSideToSide” attributes in the Leg Component channel box slider have been fixed.
– Spline Spine has fixed the cogGimbal control being ignored during auto-alignment.
Zoo Preferences – New Zoo Shelf Load Setting
A new feature has been added to the Preferences UI, allowing users to load or disable the ZooTools Shelf on start-up.
– Shelf Active On Startup: Sets the shelf to be the active tab
– Load Zoo Tools Shelf on Startup: The shelf will not be available if it is set to off.
The Zoo Shelf can be completely disabled if you use the menu or floating shelf.
Note the Zoo Floating Shelf is Shift Alt Q in the Zoo Tools Hotkeys or the following python.
from zoo.libs.maya.cmds.hotkeys import definedhotkeys
definedhotkeys.open_zooShelfFloatingWindow()
Bug Fix – Global Buttons
All buttons can be cancelled by dragging the mouse outside the clicked button state. Thanks to Simon Leykamm for the fix.
All buttons can be cancelled by dragging off in the press state.
Bug Fix – Stylesheets
We’ve fixed a bug that caused all custom colors to change incorrectly in Zoo Preferences UI.
Changing Custom UI colors has been fixed
Bug Fix – Source Code Editor
We resolved an issue related to the Zoo Source Code Editor’s loading and saving functionality for setting the output directory.
To execute the selected code, press Ctrl + Enter. To execute all the code, press Ctrl + Shift + Enter.
The Zoo Source Code Editor.
Bug Fix – Modelling Toolbox UIs
Several modelling hotkeys and buttons now check for selection instead of displaying errors.
Bug Fix – Fix Viewport
The Fix Viewport light rig can now be deleted removing display layers correctly.
Layers are removed when deleting the Fix Viewport rig.
Bug Fix – Browsers
The selected renderer is now properly filtering the thumbnail images on all browsers.
Filter browsers by renderer is fixed.
Bug Fix – Shader Manager
The Emission Weight Slider can exceed the value of 1.0.
Emission weight can go above 1.0
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Buy Zoo Tools.
To see all the tools, go to the Zoo 2 Information Page.
Registered users can download and upgrade from the Zoo 2 Install Page.
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Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn!