Set Reach Targets By color selection -Raycast Detection -Colors could be painted on a surface and align with the mesh normals on or alternate prop or character
The paint toolset from Character Creator for painting physics textures on Characters or objects in iClone can again become a big asset for fast animation reach technique. I do not come from an animating back ground but when I started to work with it I find the process of creating reach targets for foot placement extremely time consuming and realized a likely quicker approach.
1. The user should be able to use a existing terrain or model to and switch it to paint mode with the iClone Painter. The terrain, character or object becomes white to be a fresh canvas to work on.
2. The user can paint many colors which could be assigned to different objects or characters. For example, the user paints footsteps or imports a transparent png with footsteps of a particular color. Ideally a spline path tool could be drawn out to create footsteps which could be procedural ie; foot distance width and length between points on the spline.
3.Once created, the person, object or terrain shows the white texture with the colors. When a character's bones are selected and reach target tool is activated, select the color using the eye dropper tool to select a color on the texture assigned to the terrain, object or character.
4. Each foot can be assigned a different color, or like the foot reach spline tool, the foot print colors are unique for each foot.
Quadruped vector graphic foot print splines should also be an option.
Ascensi
If your character has an existing walk or arm animation, there should be a blend level slider that you could also keyframe how much influence/attraction it has - compatibility to work with cleaning up mocap or existing animations and build animations from scratch.
Ascensi
It would be interesting to paint a trail on the terrain where you want a spline footstep to go and either a physical spline path is created or a vector path.. Ideally you would want to have an option to sample the terrain height so you can paint over a ravine, hold shift then click the other side, release shift to continue and have it create a physical spline path over the ravine if you plan to add a bridge but the rest of the terrain keeps an editable vector spline image.
Ascensi
This is highly practical for mocap correction, a simple spline walk path wont correct feet/leg positions that already have data. White canvas area could mean free mocap movement but when the character is over a colored footstep, it makes solid contact with the ground.
Also use Reach Map Opacity to hide the painted map when satisfied. When Painting, the Alpha channel should have allow the user to fade in a white background while working and set the opacity of that so it can be semi transparent if needed.
Ascensi
Having procedural footstep splines that are animatable could be developed to influence terrains or objects with displacement to make actual foot prints in sand or mud, digging, road & trail making that could be used with the new terrain plugin.
