The following is a glossary of terms related to the KineFX framework, toolset, and workflow.

Glossary

A

Animated Pose

The skeleton that carries the animation data for a character. Also known as the animation skeleton.

The skeleton that deforms a character’s capture.

B

Bind Pose

The state of a driver object, or a target object in a constraint relationship when the objects were first constrained. Analogous to the rest pose.

Bone

See Link.

C

Capture

(Noun) A piece of geometry that is bound to a KineFX skeleton, and is moved and deformed by the skeleton’s joint transformations. Also known as a skin.

(Verb) To bind a piece of polygonal geometry to a KineFX skeleton, making it the character’s skin.

Capture Geometry

A combination of bone capture lines and a tetrahedral mesh that drives the skin geometry in a Bone Capture Biharmonic capture setup.

Capture Layer

A single Capture Layer Paint SOP in a capture network for a single piece of skin geometry that contains multiple Capture Layer Paint SOPs.

Capture Pose

The skeleton pose used for a character’s skin capture.

Capture Skeleton

The skeleton that is used for a character’s skin capture.

Character

The capture skeleton, capture skin, and animated rig.

D

J

Joint

A KineFX point that is part of a hierarchy or skeleton.

L

Local Space Transforms

A point’s translation, orientation, and scale with respect to its parent in a given KineFX hierarchy.

M

MotionClip

A piece of packed geometry that contains a series of animated poses over a range of time.

P

Point

The lowest level piece of KineFX geometry that possesses transforms in the form of P and transform(matrix3) attributes.

R

Ragdoll

Procedural animation generated with the help of a Bullet physics-based solver. See Setting up ragdoll simulations for characters.

Rest Geometry

An imported character’s skin. This typically contains polygons with a boneCapture point capture attribute, which can be deformed using the Joint Deform SOP.

Rest Pose

The default or initial pose for a skeleton. This is often a t-pose.

The pose defined by conforming skeletons with the Rig Match Pose SOP. Necessary for the retargeting process.

Retargeting

The process by which the animation on one skeleton or rigged character is transferred to another.

Rig

A hierarchy of joints, IK solvers, constraints, and blend shapes.

Rigid Capture

A skin or skin region composed of SOP points with boneCapture attribute values of 1.0.

A rigid capture is only moved (not deformed) by its skeleton’s transformations.

This type of capture is most often created by a Capture Packed Geometry capture setup, but can also be created by a Bone Capture Biharmonic capture setup when it includes a Capture Layer Paint SOP.

S

Secondary Motion

Procedural animation generated using various motion effects like lag/overshoot, jiggle, and spring. See Adding secondary motion to characters.

Skeleton

A simple hierarchy of KineFX joints that are visually connected by non-selectable 2-point poly lines.

Skin Geometry

The input geometry for the capture (skin). This is the mesh that the Bone Capture Biharmonic SOP and Capture Packed Geometry SOP nodes apply capture weights to. The Bone Deform SOP moves and deforms this mesh based on its skeleton’s animation.

Soft Capture

A skin or skin region composed of SOP points with boneCapture attribute values of less than 1.0.

A soft capture is both moved and deformed by its skeleton’s transformations.

This type of capture is created by a Bone Capture Biharmonic capture setup.

Source

For an animation retarget operation, the origin skeleton the animation is coming from.

State

A snapshot of the transforms for a series of points or joints.

T

Target

For an animation retarget operation, the destination skeleton the animation is going to.

For an FBIK solve, the transforms that the skeleton attempts to reach.

Tetrahedral Mesh

A solid mesh comprised of tetrahedra that is part of the capture geometry that drives a capture.

Tweak Pose

Source and target (destination) poses used for rig matching. Stores individual point transforms.

W

World Space Transforms

A point’s translation, orientation, and scale with respect to the world origin.

KineFX

Preparing character inputs

Rigging with rig components

Rigging with APEX graphs

Building graphs with APEX Script

Animating in the viewport

Technical Animation

Deformation

Animation Retargeting

Pre-H20

Panes

Appendix