Crowd Stride Control

 
 
 

Scales down the length of actors' strides when walking at very slow speeds in a CrowdFX simulation. This generally gives better-looking results than simply playing the animation very slowly. This compound works in conjunction with the Stride parameters set in Initialize Locomotion Data.

This compound can be used only in the Simulation region of the Point_Cloud object after Set Locomotion, but before any other constraints involving the legs.

For more information, see Controlling the Stride.

Tasks: Crowds/Constraints

Output Ports: Execute

Height Min

Set this value to the height of the foot effector in the rig. This value is used to clamp the result of Height Scaling. The amount of foot lifting will never be scaled to a value lower than this.

 

You don't want to scale any rig elements below the height of the ankle when the foot is on the ground.

Height Scaling

The factor used to scale the amount of foot lifting at very slow speeds. This avoids a "high-stepping" walk animation when scaling the length of stride. Use values between 0 and 1 to scale down.

 

Original unscaled transformations of the foot

 

Shorter stride used at low speed, without height scaling

 

Result of height scaling, showing lower foot lifts

Left/Right

Root

A reference to the left/right leg root bone in the actor's Rig_Proxy.

Root Name

A name to prefix to Root to fully resolve the name.

Knee

A reference to the left/right knee (shin) bone in the actor's Rig_Proxy. This should be a child of Root.

Knee Name

A name to prefix to Knee to fully resolve the name.

Effector

A reference to the left/right leg effector in the actor's Rig_Proxy. This should be a child of Knee. In addition, the corresponding feet bones and effector should be descendants of this object.

Effector Name

A name to prefix to Effector to fully resolve the name.

Root Direction

The local vector of the leg root bone that points at the knee.

Knee Direction

The local vector of the knee bone that points at the effector.

TipIf the simulation includes multiple actor sources, you can plug multiple instances of this node into a Select Case node with its Condition port driven by Get Actor ID. This allows you to use different values for different actor types.