One of the things I want to overcome in the character animation area, is having character meshes react a little to their environment. An example of this is having a characters foot morph a little as the foot contacts the ground. This kind of thing is pretty subtle, only seen in relatively close views (such as a camera following someone's footsteps). And it doesn't happen all the time - a character might have solid shoes on!
Nevertheless, there are times when you may want something like this. Now, you can achieve this with native tools, but I wanted to be able to keep some things a little more parametric like another well known visual effects software. So I developed a tool that can take a selection of polygons (such as a surface the character is walking along), and extrude the selection so that it becomes a volume. This is now key, because with the volume, I can do collision deforming. If a character with bare feet treads on a rock surface for example, I can now deform their foot a little using the new volume tool to collide with.
It's a small detail, and one that doesn't usually reveal itself much. But it is one that can help sell shots, help ground your character to their environment. Even if the viewer doesn't realise it. Screen shot below of the tool in action:
The tool can also do this with animated meshes. So if the selected polygons are moving, the tool rebuilds its volume cache based on the new adjusted surface positions. I know grounds don't usually move, but there are some other places where surfaces might, such as the deck of a boat.
And the advantage of using a polygon selection, is that the volume is built only on the polygons you want to interact with. This keeps building time down, and collision tests down to only the size you want. You could even have a high polygon version of your ground, but use a low polygon version to collide with.
And on top of all that, I can even export an object sequence for it using my own exporter tool I made recently. This might be handy if I need the volume to collide with (or do some dynamics with) in another software.
Really starting to tie some ends off now.
My motion capture gear still hasn't arrived yet. I'm starting to wonder if I should have just ordered the full kit up front. But anyhow, I've got plenty to work on still. Another little box ticked.