Automatic Proxies Setup

There’s a quite common technique used to get better performance during animation process - instead of using final quality deforming meshes a set of rigid mesh pieces attached to skeleton joints is used. These pieces (proxies) approximate the effect of deformation quite well but they do not require evaluating any deformation.

ACS2 offers such functionality via Bind Proxy Mode. You can switch between deforming and proxy meshes at will but you do need to set all the proxy pieces up manually. That typically involves copying and pasting parts of the bind mesh into separate layers and then attaching these layers to bind skeleton joints as rigid meshes. Quite a bit of tedious work…

ACS3 takes that workflow one step further and offers automatic setup of the Bind Proxy Mode. The only prerequisite is that your bind (deforming) meshes need to be weighted as this feature works off weight maps. Additionally, the quality of the auto generated proxies depends on the quality of weight maps, the more precise and clean weights are the better proxies will be generated. I actually found auto proxies to be a good way of testing weight maps - if cuts between proxies appear in wrong places or they have jagged outlines there’s a good chance your weights can be improved.

Watch video below to see how this functionality works in practice.