Imho that last point is a bit…redundant?
Well, I mean, if you already add joint pinning (sorry , english is not my language, and get lost easily with tech talk) to worldspace (this is the way it is in most high end packages I tested in those jobs(nothing great, but I could taste the packages…)) imho the best…as if done well, at least you start with a way to do accurately all the stuff; if later on you can also have access to mixing motions, reusing them, wonderful…but I am more worried on the actual limit when a foot is hard to leave steady. (yep, I have done too, with a cheap package, but is a pain, and at the end the quality is never the same)
The situation is not only feet and floor, as I said…Is many more situations. If you make the biped walk in a side view, you can see to quite acurateness (zoom if needed) to the floor grid line. yet so, of course a floor limit level would be useful, but imho, having worldspace joint pinning already gives you that. Adding the floor level after that first feature is done, seems more sensible to me…
I mean, I did walk cycles, atackas and stuff for main players just using character studio planted key (glueing to world space) , free key (release that plated key at any frame) , and sliding key (like with planted key if u use the move biped tool (in cs there’s a different tool to move the biped; the typical move tool is what ik moves the body parts, while you often fine tweak with fk rotations.) in y axe, then it stretch legs till maximum (not needed but nice) and once reached that, continues in the air. If u move it down even in same frame (for testing, don’t droping the mouse) and go much down…it ik rotates very naturally (also thanks to joint limits premade in cs biped) as the foot joint that was planted found it’s y position .With planted key, it will “search” its x,y,z position. If used sliding key instead, it looks only the y position, and will fall wherever the x z position it has now. The legs will flex as in the other case. )
Both methods where reaally useful. And the ability to “free” them at any moment, activate again for another joint…In art of Illussion you can do this with several joints at same time; in character Studio, I don’t remeber…yes, I think you could, as I used with both feet fro jumping,
I could be moving in long jumps, whatever, the biped, it still would consider the very exact point of world space where I decided to pint the joint.
if some one tests the cs4.2 that comes with max in the free 30 days trial, you may not get the idea; learning to use cs at beguining is not trivial, but the most functional and easy once learnt just a pair of things…
Mirai has a similar feature to this of the pinning. And some other incredibly sweet things.
I done have a single doubt also Maya does. yet I have not used to that extent.
.The problem could be is I am afraid *.x files (the wip plugin from Ben Omari is a great hope) and similar may need it to be a full chain. Also, I don’t like to see unwanted stretching occur while positioning a foot , or clavicle, etc.