Character Control Pages in XSI.

By Adam Sale

The XSI Rig character, first introduced us to the idea of using Synoptic Views to aid in the Animation process. An extension of XSI's netview capabilities, synoptic Views give us the ability to create highly intuitive control pages from which to direct and refine a character's performance. This paper intends to take you through that process from pre-plan through to creation and implementation.

I'll be using a character I built a little while back to run through the process. It's a little goblin named Gage that you can download by clicking the image on the right. Unzip the project to a chosen working directory.

Open the finished scene that is included with the Project. When Gage is visible in your 3D viewports, select either of the hip control boxes located at his waist and press F3 to open the associated Synoptic view. Keep in mind that these are the only two objects in a scene that will launch a character synoptic view for this particular scene.

Examine Gage's synoptic, tabbing through the various sections.

The scripts that are associated to the control buttons are simple code, cut and pasted from the script editor, with minimal adjustment. Though the scripts are crude, they are effective. If anybody has alternate methods on creating the scripts themselves, I'd be interested in taking a look at them.

Each synoptic page is a single .jpg that I've built in photoshop to function in the way that best suits my workflow. Initially, the buttons seen on the various pages are no more functional than the blank areas, until I use the synoptic editor to associate scripts to a certain portion of each page. The technique is known as an image map. XSI's synoptic editor allows you to draw and define these hotspots link them quickly to a script or to another HTML page. For portability purposes, I recommend saving all of your scripts created for your characters in the synoptic folder of your characters project.

If you move your projects around between a number of different machines, this is the easiest way to maintain the integrity of your synoptic pages. If on the other hand, you participate on a network, and can access the files remotely from any computer, you may wish to store your scripts in a shared folder seen by all machines on the network.

Close this scene and open the Intro scene to follow along with the rest of this paper..

I've styled the Gage Synoptic similar to the Manta character's synoptic, yet added in a number of extra controls that work for my purposes. The most useful to me are the multi - level keying tools found on the first tab, and access to the different facial poses on the Face Tab.

When building each of these synoptic pages, I recommend keeping a folder handy where you can store the PSD's you'll be building in photoshop. You'll wind up with a lot of layers while building, so the PSD format will be most useful in re-purposing the assets you build before saving them as .JPG's.

Keep the size of your synoptic reasonable while building. Reasonable is dictated by the resolution of your monitor, therefore in this paper, I'll assume you're working at a monitor resolution of 1280 X 1024. A synoptic view of about 297 X 420 should be more than enough room to accommodate your design needs without hogging all of your desktop.

Open up a synoptic Editor by clicking on View > Views > Synoptic Editor. The window that pops up allows you to begin building your controls. Import the first saved .JPG by clicking File > Import Picture From File, navigate to the folder where your .jpg is stored (should be your projects synpotic folder) and select the file. When you press OK, the image will have been brought into your editor. At this point all we want to do is save the result as an HTML file. Click File> Save As and give your page an appropriate name.

 

Since each page has five tabs at the top, we're going to have to create as many linked hotspots as tabs on each page. In my case, I'll need to create 5 hotspots on each page.

Click on File > Open to open up the first HTML file you saved. In my case it would be the gage_page.html file, the first tab named Gage. At the top of your synoptic editor, note the four primitive icons. These are tools you can use to draw hotspot shapes on your HTML file containing the .JPG image.

Click on the rectangle icon and draw a rectangular shape in the area of the second tab. Once you've drawn a hotspot, feel free to click and drag it around your window, or resize it by clicking and dragging one of the lines. When you've got the hotspot in place, draw in all other hotpsots for the tabbed area of the first page. When you've done so click on the second rectangle, superimposed over the Reset Tab.

Near the top of your synoptic window is a line that reads Link With.

Click the browse button at the right of the line and navigate to the Reset_page.html We'll link the hotspot so that when the user clicks the area over the word Reset in the final version, it take us to the Reset_Page.html that contains the reset.JPG.

A hotspot allows you to link to an html page, or a script that is written in any language XSI can understand. In this case, all of the links at the top of each tab will be HTML links, allowing us to navigate between different pages.

After you link up all of the tabs at the top of each page to their respective HTML page you created earlier, you can confirm that the hotspots correspond to the correct HTML page, by examining the path that appears after the Link With…. Line.

You should end up with 20 HTML links by the time you're done.

All hotspots from here on in, will be links to VBS files that we'll need to create in XSI.

If you're looking for additional information in creating the various scripts made on the first tab, you can refer to this link, basically I make good use of the FC command at the end of each SaveKey line of code. The last string in the Savekey command, is a number, that's reflects the current frame you're on. Replacing this number with the string FC alters the command slightly so that the savekey command saves the pose at the current frame.

Save each of your HTML pages to update the changes.

Create Hotspots for the various keying buttons arranged throughout your pages. Link each in turn to its orresponding script.

The save Scene button is attached to a VBS file called SafeSave.vbs. It's a script written by Kim Aldis that saves your scene with incrementally numbered files and then closes and reopens the scene to make sure the file didn't corrupt in the saving process.

Examine the rest of the scripts to see how much use I make of the Time Function, FC as well as the * wildcard.

When you've linked up all of your files, save each of your HTML pages to update the changes.

Hooking the Synoptic to your character

 

Select the one of the objects that can launch a synoptic view and press F3. You can only launch a synoptic view if it has a synoptic property. Your explorer will display a purple 's' icon underneath any object that has a synoptic property.

You'll need to choose which objects on your character can launch a synoptic view. I've chosen either of Gage's waist boxes. With the desired objects selected, click on Get > Property > Synoptic. In the popup that appears, you'll be prompted to chose a path that needs to point to the first HTML page you wish to display when the synoptic view is launched. In my case that page is the gage_synoptic.html. Close the popup when you're done

Keep in mind that if you place a synoptic property on a particular object, the F3 command will conflict with XSI's popup explorer hotkey for the same object. Your solution is to either map the synoptic hotkey to another keystroke, or to simply work as is. By the time you begin animating, your need to examine the popup explorer should be minimal, I never really find myself wishing the hotkeys could be mapped differently.

When you start working with synoptics you'll soon notice a substantial increase in workflow. Bringing all your necessary character controls into one central command station allows for better orchestration. And in the end, isn't that we're all after?

Character Control Pages in XSI Written and Performed by Adam Sale, Techncial Director Joncrow Entertainment. Copyright 2002.