Guide Color Tool
Last updated
Last updated
XGen lacks a straightforward method to change the color of its guides, requiring users to paint a map and use it in the guide color attribute under the Preview/Output tab. The Guide Color Tool simplifies this process. By utilizing Maya display layers and sets, it enhances guide organization, allowing users to more easily distinguish between guides.
Guide color tool is a workaround and utilizes the underlying mesh that is assigned to XGen for calculation. If you are looking to use this on geometries with large face count, it will probably be extremely slow (ex, full creature body, full humanoid body). Before creating a guide layer, please make sure:
There are no transform on the scalp mesh.
The underlying growth/scalp mesh has UV and it's:
in the 1001 UDIM space
named as 'map1'
Maya's work unit is in 'centimeter'. Preferences -> Settings: Working Units
Please watch this video to see if your work can match the prerequisites
Guide Info:
Name of color layer that selected guides are in. It displays the last word of the assigned color layer separated by “_”. If guides not in the current description are selected, ‘Alien’ will be displayed, and the info box will turn red.
S-M-L:
Size of the UI. Small, Midium, or Large.
Current Collection:
The collection that XGen is currently on.
Current Description:
The description that XGen is currently on. Only guides in the current description should be selected when creating a guide color layer.
Preview Percent:
Determines the primitive preview percent each time when a guide color ptex map is re-baked. Set this to 0 when first assigning colors to avoid confusion
Color Radius:
This setting is highly dependent on the scalp mesh face counts. To be able to assign color to XGen guides, it's taking the underlying scalp mesh, subdividing it enough to paint the color on nearby vertices. Lowering the radius will give more precise result (slower), increasing the radius will give rougher result (faster). Default of 1.00 works well in most cases. Please only lower this number if there are guides very close to each other and the color is bleeding through from one layer to another.
Color Random:
Varies the value between each guides, but keeping the hue and saturation.
Resolution:
Coloring is done by baking a map. This slider controls the resolution of the map. Higher resolution will yields a more fine, crispier edge (Slower). When color is bleeding through to nearby guides, it is recommended to try and lower the 'Threshold' slider first. Increasing the resolution setting will result in slower calculation.
Visualize:
Check this on to see the map being baked on the underly scalp. Make sure to toggle shaded (default hot key 6 in Maya).
Full Update:
Rebake a Ptex map using the color settings from above to all the guides in the current description.
Update Selected:
Rebake a Ptex using the settings from above to only selected guides in the current description.
Create Guide Layer:
Select guides in current description, and creates a guide color layer. If no guide(s) are selected, it creates an empty layer.
Left Click:
selects the guides in the layer
Middle Click:
toggles Isolate Mode The global visibility will be unchanged.
Right Click:
add/remove guides, modify taper/width of guides in this layer, or rename this layer.
Ctrl + Click or Shift + Click:
select multiple layers
Color Swatches:
Change the color by clicking on the color swatch. Every time a color is changed, the tool will re-bake a new .PTEX map to be used in the guide color attribute.
Layer visibility (V):
Like Maya Display Layers, turn on/off of guides in that layer. When multiple layers are selected, all will be toggled
Layer Lock (L):
Like Maya Display Layers, set template/lock of guides in that layer to keep them from being selected. When multiple layers are selected, all will be toggled
Add Guide (+):
Add selected guides into this layer. When multiple layers are selected, guides will ONLY be added to the layer that was right-clicked on.
Remove Guide (-):
Remove selected guides from layer.
Delete Guide Layer (x):
Delete entire guide layer. This will assign guides in this layer back to the default orange color. When multiple layers are selected, all layers will be deleted.
Sets (1-9):
Allows another layer of organization. Users can choose to add guide layers to a set to quickly select them, toggle their visibility, locks, or move groups of layers up and down the list. At the moment there are 9 sets avaliable for each XGen description.
Left Click:
Selects the all the layers (and the guides in those layers) in this set
Right Click:
Set menu
"C" Button:
The C button clears all layer sets assignment.
The tool comes with Visibility, Lock and Up/Down buttons: 1. Toggle all layer Visibility ON 2. Toggle all layer Visibility OFF 3. Invert current layers Visibility states 4. Toggle all layer Lock ON 5. Toggle all layer Lock OFF 6. Invert current layers Lock States 7. Move selected Guide Layer(s) Up 8. Move selected Guide Layer(s) Down 9. Move selected Guide Layer(s) to the top 10. Move selected Guide Layer(s) to the bottom
Remove Empty Layers:
If there are unused guide layers, clicking on this button will remove all of them in the current XGen description
Reset:
Clears all guide layers, color, layer set assignment, and guide taper/width values for the current description.
If you encountered one of these errors:
Error 1: an error saying Description can not be refreshed, Solution: Please restart Maya and try again. Error 2: RuntimeError: Failed to export the attribute map. Solution: Chances are that there are some unknown attributes that makes the UV disappear during a 'remesh' process. Unfortunately, when this happens, please export the growth mesh as .obj, and reimport it back in, and use that as the growth geometry.
