AlignHelper

Plugins AlignHelper

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noone77521

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noone77521 submitted a new resource:

AlignHelper - This plugin helps to align atoms in a scene with other atoms or a point on the screen.

In scene creation, it is often necessary to align or offset the position of some atoms relative to others.
This plugin helps to align atoms in a scene with other atoms or a point on the screen.

How To Use:
  1. Load this plugin on the atoms that need to be aligned.
  2. Select atoms and parts to align.
  3. Press the "Align Now" button to align. You can also select "Lock" to make it auto-align.
  4. If you want the alignment atoms to be offset in position or orientation from the target...
Click to expand...

Read more about this resource...
 
noone77521 updated AlignHelper with a new update entry:

Add Rotation Align Mode

Adjusted the rotation handling, now there are four modes for rotation: None, Follow, Original and Identity.

None - do nothing
Follow - follows the target's Rotation
Original - maintains the Rotation of the plugin when it was initialized.
Identity - Keeps the Identity Rotation.

Options for reversing and Lock Height are also provided.
When you check Lock Height, the Y-axis will be set to 0, and you can set a fixed height by adjusting the position Y offset.
Click to expand...

Read the rest of this update entry...
 
Useful plugin, I like it. Perhaps consider adding the option to align only specific axis/rotation you could do it by just adding a small check by each one that when toggled off ignores that specific axis when alignment is triggered.
 
It would much better to have it as a session plugin and choose atom and controller to be aligned from dropdown list. Could you try this approach?
 
kretos said:
It would much better to have it as a session plugin and choose atom and controller to be aligned from dropdown list. Could you try this approach?
Click to expand...

WOW, I hadn't imagined that. Atoms are different in different scenes. I'm trying to understand this, what are you trying to use for alignment?
 
Everything :D
I usually use move and select but this can be very hard in desktop mode. I guess atoms should be selected again when scene is reloaded.
 
Nice update on JayJayWon's old nodealign plugin - a request, if I may?

When working with rotation offsets, it would be usefull to be able to choose between world coordinate axes and local coordinate axes (the coordinate system aligned with the target's orientation.

Additionally, grading rotation increments in a way similar to VaM's default "move"-tab (ie. 0.5°, 5°, 45° increments) might be more convenient than decimal increments.
 
Hi I have no idea if this is possible with this plugin but here goes.
I am trying to make a scene where a car is driving through a city (vam city). Because there are person animations going on in the car, the only option for movement/driving is to animate the city not the car.

My trouble is that the control node of vam city is fixed in the middle of the map which makes it near impossible to make car left/right turns look anywhere normal because the map is big. I'm guessing I would need the vam city control node to be fixed with the car control. If there could be a way to rotate city relative to position of the car, no matter where the car is on the map.

I hope this made at least some sense.
 
Case said:
Nice update on JayJayWon's old nodealign plugin - a request, if I may?

When working with rotation offsets, it would be usefull to be able to choose between world coordinate axes and local coordinate axes (the coordinate system aligned with the target's orientation.

Additionally, grading rotation increments in a way similar to VaM's default "move"-tab (ie. 0.5°, 5°, 45° increments) might be more convenient than decimal increments.
Click to expand...

Wow, JayJayWon is a fantastic plugin developer. It seems like I haven't tried his NodeAlign before. I specifically took a look at it, and it mainly aligns the current atom to a certain node of a character. He divides the nodes of the person's body very finely, which is greate.

As for your suggestion, I will study when it can be implemented. Thank you for your feedback.
 
FreeMaster69 said:
Hi I have no idea if this is possible with this plugin but here goes.
I am trying to make a scene where a car is driving through a city (vam city). Because there are person animations going on in the car, the only option for movement/driving is to animate the city not the car.

My trouble is that the control node of vam city is fixed in the middle of the map which makes it near impossible to make car left/right turns look anywhere normal because the map is big. I'm guessing I would need the vam city control node to be fixed with the car control. If there could be a way to rotate city relative to position of the car, no matter where the car is on the map.

I hope this made at least some sense.
Click to expand...

I never thought there would be such a use case, you all are so creative, I hope you can achieve what you wish for.
 
noone77521 said:
Wow, JayJayWon is a fantastic plugin developer. It seems like I haven't tried his NodeAlign before. I specifically took a look at it, and it mainly aligns the current atom to a certain node of a character. He divides the nodes of the person's body very finely, which is greate.

As for your suggestion, I will study when it can be implemented. Thank you for your feedback.
Click to expand...

Yeah. I specifically mentioned NodeAlign because I made a mod of this plugin that had some similarities to your Alignhelper. You're right, though, that NodeAlign was tailored towards Person atoms as targets, whereas Alignhelper is more general.

P.S.: When I mention "local" orientation/coordinate systems, I use the term in the sense it is used in physics/mathematics, not in the sense Unity uses it. In Unity, "local" refers to the position & orientation of the parent of the currently chosen gameobject. That is usefull for standard Unity scenes - but Vam's basic element is an "atom", not a gameobjects. Atoms are much more complicated things than gameobjects.
 
Last edited:
Case said:
Yeah. I specifically mentioned NodeAlign because I made a mod of this plugin that had some similarities to your Alignhelper. You're right, though, that NodeAlign was tailored towards Person atoms as targets, whereas Alignhelper is more general.

P.S.: When I mention "local" orientation/coordinate systems, I use the term in the sense it is used in physics/mathematics, not in the sense Unity uses it. In Unity, "local" refers to the position & orientation of the parent of the currently chosen gameobject. That is usefull for standard Unity scenes - but Vam's basic element is an "atom", not a gameobjects. Atoms are much more complicated things than gameobjects.
Click to expand...

If you have already implemented the relevant processing, the open-source repository for this plugin is: https://github.com/jamexuxu/AlignHelper, contributions to the code are welcome.
 
noone77521 said:
If you have already implemented the relevant processing, the open-source repository for this plugin is: https://github.com/jamexuxu/AlignHelper, contributions to the code are welcome.
Click to expand...

Errrrhno, I built that mod years ago, it was my first C# coding project, and it doesn't have the improvements I suggested (also, it's a mod on nodealign, and as such, only works on nodes of a person-atom. Ie. it's less capable than what you already have).
 
Case said:
Errrrhno, I built that mod years ago, it was my first C# coding project, and it doesn't have the improvements I suggested (also, it's a mod on nodealign, and as such, only works on nodes of a person-atom. Ie. it's less capable than what you already have).
Click to expand...
Alright, I will find some time to see if it can be implemented.
 
noone77521 said:
Alright, I will find some time to see if it can be implemented.
Click to expand...

Yeah, sorry. I did build some "experimental" versions of the "Person-centric Nodealign with offsets" - there are versions targetting Empty atoms, one targetting AnimationPatterns and AnimationSteps etcetc.

All of which are now obsolete thanks to your work.

However, the basic user interface of your plugin and my mod are pretty much identical - and have the same weaknesses room for improvement. Which is where my suggestions come from - ideas I wanted to implement, but lacked the knowledge for.

Additional user interface-idea:
I always found the input-method via sliders in the standard plugin-UI canvas somewhat ... clunky. It'd be much more convenient if one could adapt the atom-movement/rotation handles (also called "gizmo" for ... whatever reason) to input the desired position/rotation offsets.

The idea would be that you have a two-step (three-step) input process:
Step 1) You first select the desired target/controlnode using the existing selection method used for possession (the one with the semi-transparent green spheres that you can click on).
Step 2) Then a "grabable" handle appears, which you move to the desired location. Once you're done, you click and the current (world-coordinate) location of the handle (relative to the location of the target-node) becomes your position offset. Also, the handle's orientation is set to be parallel to the orientation of the target node.
Step 3) Next, you can modify the handle's orientation, confirming your choice with another click.

You'd also keep the "slider-based input method" for fine-tuning.

What do you think?
 
I have a question - as I'm trying to have a person holding a video camera that always points at another person.
I found that aligning directly at their head causes to mimic their head rotation exactly. So I used a empty atom attached to the head instead.
Does the alignhelper allow me to aim at empty atoms? I don't see it tracking at all.
thanks!!
 
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