Jerome (now at Fabric - go team!) wrote GATOR. I'd ask him about doing it in Fabric but I think he'd stab me if I gave him any more work to do. I don't know if there are patents around the work and that's why other people haven't replicated it.
On 28 May 2015 at 08:21, Marc-Andre Carbonneau < [email protected]> wrote: > Good morning Lucer, > > Do you remember who designed and coded GATOR? > I'm just curious. > Thanks! > MAC > > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto: > [email protected]] On Behalf Of Luc-Eric Rousseau > Sent: May-27-15 9:11 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: GATOR - A feature in Softimage since 2008 > > GATOR was developed for/with one of our main game customers, Square I > think. > I'm not aware of a Gator "sdk", what is that? > There are attribute transfers in other apps, but it's generally separate > tools for textures vs rigging things, reflecting on their architecture vs > XSI > > On 27 May 2015 at 19:27, Matt Lind <[email protected]> wrote: > > For the record, GATOR was introduced in late 2005 with XSI v5.0, not > > in 2008. > > > > GATOR was largely tailored for those switching applications and doing > > rigging in a film/video pipeline. For games development, GATOR has > > less use out-of-the-box as the very things that made it nice for > > exchanging data between XSI and Maya, for example, were the very same > > features that tripped up game artists trying to do simpler things > quickly in heavy repetition. > > > > I wrote a command based version of the tool using the GATOR SDK as > > artists needed more micro-management of meshes and transfers. Artists > > used it to transfer UV's, normals, vertex colors, envelope weights, > > and many other features. I also extended, as well as exposed, many > > features from the SDK GATOR did not expose directly such as > > transferring attributes in local space, by raycasting, distance > > limits, transferring only selected subcomponents, correcting numerical > flaws found in UV transfer, and so on. > > However, my use of the GATOR SDK was not limited to replicating the > > tool as a command. I also used it heavily for other tasks which > > weren't strictly related to attribute transfer tasks such as animation > > remapping, pose transfer, mesh fitting, and interactive editing of > > normals and symmetrical envelope weighting of asymmetrical characters. > > > > To hear other applications don't have a GATOR equivalent in this day > > and age is surprising considering it's so universally useful and isn't > > rocket science to develop. If you know anything about tree data > > structures and linear algebra, you can write your own (even if it's > > not as efficient as GATOR). What makes the GATOR SDK nice is the > > algorithm is very fast, accurate, and relatively easy to use. Reverse > > lookups of subcomponents is a pain as GATOR worked on triangles, not > > polygons, but that's minor compared to all the benefits it provides. > >
