EARLY ACCESS BUILD 11 IS AVAILABLE
ACS3 Early Access Build 11 is available and it brings quite a few changes! The more detailed list is below but I’d like to mention three main features first.
Biped limbs now have a support for twist joints and the number of joints is configurable. That means that you can use as many joints as you need to get smooth twist deformation or as few as your joint budget allows. Quadruped legs do not have twist joints yet as I’d like to make sure the setup works well first. If no serious issues get reported I’ll add twist joints support to quadruped legs too.
The second feature I want to mention is a brand new set of game export tools. These tools are integrated within MODO’s native game export toolbar (you will see new ‘Rig’ tab in the toolbar) and they streamline the export process to external applications (Unreal and Unity engine are supported now). You do not need to bake the rig and then export .fbx file manually anymore. It’s pretty much single click operation now to export a rig into your game engine project. You can export skeletal mesh and actions either in single .fbx files or in separate files. You can make updates easily by exporting only data that has changed, a skeletal mesh or a single action.
And last but not least are new rig presets suitable for use with game engines: Biped Game (universal preset, works for Unity as well) and Biped Game Unreal (specifically for Unreal).
New biped rig presets for use with game engines.
Here’s a more detailed list of changes:
Adds twist joints to biped rig limbs. The number of twist joints is configurable.
Adds Game Export panel for easy export of baked rig and animations to game engines (Unreal, Unity).
Adds Cycle Mode for previewing your game animations as in-game cycles.
Fixes left side first rigging - it’s now possible to flip the default right sided modules to the left side, fit left side and mirror module to the right side afterwards.
Orientations of left sided bind locators are not mirrored anymore. Controllers are still mirrored to allow for symmetric manipulation of the rig but the output bind skeleton is not mirrored on the left side.
It’s now possible to set bake names and bake orientation offsets for bind locators. This allows for tweaking the exported version of the rig to the particular requirements of the game engine or other external applications. The baked/exported skeleton can have an exact naming and bind locators alignment that you need. Baked skeleton settings can be saved as a preset so you can reuse it across multiple rigs.
Adds Biped Game rig preset. This preset has 2 joints in each section of the limb (2 for arm, 2 for forearm, etc.). Also, the Root Motion controller is added (you can add/remove it manually in Base module properties). This preset should be good for use within Unity. Default bind locators alignment should work better with Unity now.
Adds Biped Unreal rig preset. This preset is the same as Biped Game but it matches the Unreal mannequin skeleton naming convention and joints orientation (X axis is going down the joint as opposed to ACS3 default Z down).
There’s also a bunch of bug fixes, especially ones with deleting modules and changing module side.
WARNING: This release contains significant changes to the way modules with dynamic properties (such as number of segments in the spine for example) are built. For this reason the build is not fully compatible with previous ones. You can still use rigs from previous builds and animate them but you will not be able to configure them (for example change number of joints in FK Chain or spine).
All the new functionality is covered in 5 fresh manual videos, you can watch them below.