Houdini 22.0 Nodes Geometry nodes

APEX Control Extract 2.0 geometry node

Extracts APEX rig controls to a KineFX skeleton.

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Since 22.0

This node extracts the rig’s bind skeleton and optionally adds a group of transform controls as joints to the extracted skeleton. Abstract control values are stored on the skeleton in a detail dictionary attribute called parms.

The node can also convert the character’s animation channels for the extracted controls into curves, which are sent to the Channel Curves output.

This node is normally used with the APEX Animation from Skeleton SOP. An application of this workflow is retargeting motion onto a character’s skeleton and reapplying the animation to the character.

Parameters

Character

The name of the character whose skeleton to extract (if this node’s input is an animation scene). Leave this blank if this node’s input is a character (if the rig tree view shows only character elements and no .char folders).

Rig Path

The rig in the character folder structure whose controls to extract.

Skeleton Path

The skeleton to retrieve from the character folder structure.

Controls

An APEX path pattern that defines a group of controls to extract as joints. By default, no controls are extracted.

Include Skeleton Joints

When turned on, the bind skeleton of the character is used as part of the output skeleton. This is usually helpful because the skeleton hierarchy is more suitable for motion processing like retargeting than the control hierarchy.

Reparent Controls by Mapping

When turned on, the extracted controls are parented to joints with the specified mapping property instead of using the control hierarchy. The mapping property is stored on the transform controls of the rig. This is useful because controls like IK controls can then naturally follow any motion applied to the bind skeleton.

The field next to this parameter specifies the name of the mapping property. The default is mapping.

Abstract Values as Detail Attributes

When turned on, the abstract control values are stored as separate detail attributes following the attribute input style of FBX animations for blendshape values. When turned off, all the abstract values are collectively stored in a detail dictionary attribute called parms.

Channel Primitives

A pattern that specifies the channel primitives in the character’s animation folder (for example, /animation/...) to convert to curves. Only the channels that drive the controls in Controls are converted. When this parameter is empty, no curves are created.

Sample Rate

The number of samples per second used to convert each channel into curve points.

Add Time Attribute

When turned on, adds a time point attribute to each curve point. The value is the time of the sample in seconds.

Inputs

Scene/Character/Rig

The geometry containing the APEX graph with the controls to extract.

Outputs

Scene/Character/Rig

Pass-through of the Scene/Character/Rig input.

Control Skeleton

A KineFX skeleton representing the bind skeleton and the control hierarchy extracted from the character of the input APEX scene.

Channel Curves

One curve per channel converted from Channel Primitives. Each curve has name and rord primitive attributes, and a time point attribute when Add Time Attribute is turned on.

See also

Geometry nodes