Blog Posts

V.09.50

11/9/2022

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XGen Guide Color:

For the guide color to work, you will need UV on the scalp mesh.

Instead of going through all guides on every operation, only selected guides will be going through the coloring procedure now. A new algorithm has been implemented for baking out the Ptex for the guide color. This speeds up the coloring process when there are many guides in the scene.
Due to this change, a new ‘Updated Selected’ button has been added. You can apply the current settings (SubD level, Color Randomness) to “selected guides” only.
Click on the Update All button, to apply the current settings to all guides in the current XGen descriptions.
Fixed an error triggered when an empty guide layer is middle-mouse clicked. Now it should give a warning instead of an error message.
Removed the Isolate checkbox as it is no longer required with the middle mouse toggle.
As mentioned, the processing speed has increased dramatically. However, if you are working on creatures and use the entire body as the scalp mesh, it will still take some processing time.
Check out the new Guide Color Demo: New Guide Color Demo

Curve From Tubes/Cards:

Volume Fill feature added. With geo tubes selected, fill in the volume of tubes with curves on selected tube meshes.
3 Card Extraction Modes added: Users can now extract curves from cards with 3 more options:
- Custom Geo Topology and Sides.
Please note that if the face count on cards is high, extraction using these new options can take some time.
Updated input field with a slider.
Check out the new Curve From Tubes/Cards Demo: https://youtu.be/aNfVlzGE9Ug

Curve Reverse:

Added Auto Filter Mode
Remove the UI window and attached a left-click pop-up option instead. Now we have two reverse options:
- 1. Manual select the ‘Tip’ and perform the reverse. This is our existing function
- 2. (NEW) Auto Filter mode: Select all the curves, shift select the scalp mesh, or a reference geometry, and the script will do its work to reverse the curves automatically.
- The icon is defaulted to option 1
Check out the new Curve Reverse Demo: https://youtu.be/9lJZZ84OstY

Curve Snap:

Reverse Mode added. Users will now be able to snap a curve in reverse
Check out the new Curve Snap Demo: https://youtu.be/Qlajq3iCqss

Curve Add:

Middle-mouse clicking a mesh will create a linear curve now. (Just like XGen)
If no curve is detected within the interpolation distance set, a linear curve will be added instead. (Just like XGen)
The linear curve will orient to the normal of the underlying face.
Increased the default interpolation distance from 5 to 50 to respect closer to the real-world scene measurement

Minor Updates:
Curve Sculpt:

Symmetry will be turned off when UI starts, this will fix where the sculpt direction is reversed as some have reported.

Curve To Curl:

Fixed Color Editor Swatch not updating

Curve To Braid:

Unlocked resizing of Side Curve UI for users unable to see the ‘Create Curves’ button.
Increased the subdivision levels on default braid geometries.

Known Issue:

XGen Guide Color Tool on first use shows up a polySmooth() error. Please restart your Maya if you see this.

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V.09.00

10/14/2022

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Braid Tool - New Side Curve/ Cornrow Feature!

A new Side Curves tool is added to help creating cornrow hairstyle.

XGen Guide Color Tool

Middle mouse click on the layer button will now isolate the guides in that layer
Fixed guide turning black issue when after hitting the reset button, saving, and reopening the scene.

Minor Updates:

Sculpt Curve will now switch to component mode when entered.

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V.08.07

9/22/2022

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Groomer's Tool V.08.07 is here! When I was working on my personal project, I felt our curves/guides snapping features can be improved.
XGen Guide Snap Tool

Reversed the selection order for snapping. To snap guide to curve, please select the ‘guide’ first, and then the ‘curve’ now. This applies to the Batch Snap Guide function as well for Daz Studio users.
XGen guide can now snap to another XGen guide. Please note that if the CV counts between the two guides or the target curve are not the same, the tool will take the larger count of the two and rebuild both.This means any guides can now be snapped to any other guide/curve, without having to to match the count first.

Maya Snap Curve Tool

Curve(s) CVs will now be evenly distributed after snapping. In previous versions, after a point snap, the CVs of curves become jammed up. In this version, the CVs will be normalized after each snap.

Before

After

XGen Multi Clump Bake

Added refresh UI for faster switching/updating descriptions

XGen Patch/Scalp Geo Rename Tool

Added more safety checks before renaming

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V08.01

8/27/2022

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V.08.01
XGen Guide Collection/Palette + Description Rename Tools

Rename XGen Guide Collection/Description

XGen Scalp Geo Rename

Added extra layers of safeguard measures in code in renaming of the .xgen files. Users should now be able to rename a scalp mesh even if the name is part of the XGen collection/description names
Ex. If a scalp geo is named as ‘head’ and the XGen collection/description is named as ‘head_col/head_des’. This will work now.

Deep Backup Tool:

To be able to safeguard all the renaming tools introduced, this tool has undergone a decent change.

Deep backup will now make a copy of the entire xgen folders and store them in the data folder.
After a deep backup, your scene will be saved, and another scene will be saved (in the scene folder) with a .temp suffix. The tool will open the .temp file after deep backup. This is to prevent Maya attributes getting saved into the deep backup file in the data folder.
It will now also work for users that save maya format with .mb.

XGen IG Guides to Curves

Converts Interactive Groom guides to curves

Guide Color Tool:

Guide color random settings should now respect the color’s value. It now takes in the Color Random value as a %, then adds to and minus from the color value to get the minimum and maximum value of the color.
Example. If the color value set in the layer is 0.30, with a Random value of 20 (0.2), a value range of 0.1 and 0.5 will be sampled to color the guides.

Curve To Curl:

Attribute sliders are now lowered to 0.001 to allow more control for scenes that do not use real world measurements.

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V07.01

8/3/2022

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XGen Geometry Rename:

A tool for renaming XGen bind mesh. We all know how unstable XGen is when it comes to renaming the mesh. It can be done, but it’s tedious. This tool is built to reduce the steps required in case the geometry must be renamed. It will work in most cases.
Demo Video

XGen Groomable Spline Transfer:

An XGen groomable spline description transfer tool. As XGen is highly dependent on folder structures and naming conventions, there are a few things to take note of for this tool to work properly.
Please visit the tool manual page for these restrictions and details.
Demo Video

NOTE: These two new tools are built for users that work in XGen with basic workflow. As there can be many different workflow between users, if you have a build that does not work, please contact me.

XGen Deep BackUp:

Updated backup folders list so it’s sorted based on creation time now.

Curve To Curl/Curve To Braid:

Added copy/paste function, now you will be able to copy settings from one curl/braid layer to other layers.

Fixed ‘Extract All Curls/Braid” button so it’s now extracted with the correct number of curves.
Adjusted the “Global Scale” math in Braid Tool.

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V.06.05

7/6/2022

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Curve Sculpt Tool:

XGen Style Sculpt tool on Maya Curve
If no curves are selected prior clicking on ‘Sculpt’, the closest curve on cursor hit will be the target sculpt.
If there are curves selected, the closest curve of the selected will be the target sculpt.
Control + Left Mouse Click: Adjust Radius
Left Mouse Click: Sculpt Curve
Shift + Left Mouse Click: Smooth curve based on the strength set
Normalize button: spread out cvs on ‘all’ selected curves

demo: youtu.be/gY43lqFkIZ0

Curve Trim Tool/Curve Snap Tool:

Update to address the need to delete history on selected mesh for snap/trim operation.

Curve Add Tool:

Curves will not be affected by ‘hidden’ mesh anymore.

Fix:

Icons for the braid and curl tool should now be correctly displayed.

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V.06.01

6/21/2022

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Layout Change:

Groomer’s Tool now has a new look. I have organized the tools into tabs. This allows for more tools to be added later on.
Added a menu bar for users to access documents with ease.
Dockable UI

Guide Color Tool:

Fixed an issue where guide color ptex map iterates multiple times when adding a guide to or removing guide from, or changing color on a guide color layer
Preview Percent value is now taking the value from the ‘Percent’ in the XGen description Preview/Output tab, this is to avoid user confusion. If you do not wish to have XGen Primitives refresh while using this tool, please set the ‘Preview Percent’ to 0.
Added global visibility, locks, move layer up or down controls (the ordering is based of current Maya layer editor order)
- Users will be able to toggle on/off or invert all guide layer visibilities.
- Users will be able to toggle lock/unlock or invert the lock for all layers.
- To move a layer up or down, click on the layer name button, the layer will be highlighted. Click the ‘up’, or ‘down’ key. Please be mindful, if there is another non-guide layer created ‘in-between’ guide color layers, you will have to click up/down again.

Curve To Braid:

Implemented the layer management interface.
Functionality added to extract from center, or from topology of braid geo, users no longer need to bake down for braid curves.
Demo: youtu.be/KGrD3ucSWnU

Curve Rebuild Tool:

Updated with selection constraints so the tool will only work when curves are selected.
Minor bug fixes.

Curve Snap Tool:

Point Snap should only snap to visible geometry in the scene now.

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V.05.04

5/25/2022

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General Update:

Licensing: for security reasons, internet connection is required when users launch Groomer’s Tool. However, it should only be asking to enter the key and email the first time it’s installed. Users may have to enter it twice. I am still looking into this.

Added XGen Existence check to all XGen utility tools.

XGen Guide Color Tool:

Fixed an issue where guide color layer doesn't show up in the UI if XGen description contains numbers
Added Preview Percent, defaulting to 0 to help with distracting primitives on fresh.

XGen Multi Clump Bake Tool:

Updated with ability to perform multi clump modifier bake even if the parent clump points were created using “Generate”.
To allow this, an option is added for the user to tell the UI if the “parent” Clump is based on “Guide” or “Generate”. Please make sure you select properly first.

Curve Rebuild Tool:

Redesigned workflow for a more user friendly workflow
Users will click on ‘Tag’ on selected curves first that need to be rebuilt. From tagging, UI will be able to pick up curve information. This will allow for:

- Retrieving information on length and ability to select the longest and shortest curves
- A powerful previewing ability to see what the resulting curve cvs will look like before applying the rebuild function.
- Choose from rebuilding current curves, or on a new set of curves.

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V.05.03

4/28/2022

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Curve to Curl

Re-designed workflow:
- Curve ‘group’, select one or multiple curves to create a ‘curl layer’
- Curl control can now affect multiple curves in the same group
- Each curl group is color coded
- Color assignment, visibility toggle, template toggle, extract curls in current layer, and remove curl layer.

Curve Trim

Optimizing to reduce chance for error.

Guide Color Tool

Auto color assignment upon creation of guide layers
Color Value variation within guide color layer
Speed improvement

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