Digit ManagerDigit ManagerPalm Animation Controls

The Digit Manager provides controls for posing the digits on a palm procedurally. The Digit Manager rollout appears on the Motion panel for a selected palm with one or more digits, although it’s most useful with palms that have multiple digits.

Procedure

To access the Digit Manager rollout:

Select a palm bone on a rig.
By default, a newly created palm has no digits; to use the Digit Manager, you need to add some.
On the Modify panel Palm/Ankle Setup rollout, set Num Digits to a value greater than 0. For example, with a human character, you’d set it to 5.
Go to the Motion panel and expand the Digit Manager rollout, if necessary.

Interface

The Digit Manager rollout includes two groups: Preset Poses and Digit Modifiers.

Preset Poses group

The Preset Poses list holds digit poses. A digit pose comprises the rotations for all digit bones on the palm or ankle. With the controls in this group you can save pose presets and then load them onto any other palm.

If the palm to which you apply a pose has fewer digits than those of the pose preset, the extra digits are ignored. If the palm has more digits, the extra digits receive no rotation data.

You can weight a pose preset, blending from one pose to another or mixing poses to create a new preset.

[pose list]: Lists saved preset poses.

To apply a preset to the selected palm without blending, double-click its name in the list.
Weight: The amount that the highlighted preset has on the digits.

To blend a preset, select the palm, click a preset pose in the list once to highlight it, and then adjust the Weight value upward.

NoteThe Weight value is relative, so that if you apply the same value several times, as long as the highlighted preset pose has been applied only partially, the blend amount increases.
Store Preset: Saves the current digit rotations as a new pose preset.

TipBy default, digit poses are stored in separate files in \[system folder]\plugcfg\CAT\HandPosePresets\.
You can use the Save As dialog to save poses in a different location, but they won’t then appear in the Preset Poses list.
Remove Preset: Deletes a pose preset from the Preset Poses list.

WarningRemoving a preset deletes the file containing the preset permanently without prompting you.

Digit Modifiers group

The Digit Modifiers group provides tools to enable you to manipulate the digits, either singly or as a group. You can transform selected digits parametrically with the Spread, Bend, Roll, and Curl controls.

NoteAll modifications are relative to the existing rotations.

[digit list]: Lists all digits on the selected palm. Before applying controls from this group, highlight the digits that the controls should affect.

TipYou can highlight multiple contiguous list entries by dragging in the list.
Spread: Rotates highlighted digits away/towards each other from the base of the digit.
Bend: Rotates highlighted digits up and down from the base of the digits.
Roll: Rotates highlighted digits around their length.
Curl: Rotates bones of highlighted digit7s up and down.