Ziva VFX 1.6 Overview

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Software Update

Ziva Anatomy Transfer (ZAT) – Click to Watch Tutorial Series

Ziva VFX v1.6 marks the release of the industry's fastest, most scalable creature workflow. One of the largest Ziva releases to date, Ziva VFX 1.6 features the highly-anticipated Ziva Anatomy Transfer (ZAT) functionality. These new transfer and warping tools empower users to rapidly generate entire populations of anatomical creatures, all at hero-character fidelity; tackling speed and scalability like never before.

With ZAT, users can transfer the anatomical geometry from one Ziva character to a secondary creature model. Instantly, the geometry will be warped/re-shaped to fit the mesh of the second, third, tenth, or hundredth additional character. Paired with Ziva's new transfer tools, artists can even carry over all of the Ziva rig settings to the secondary creature, to automatically generate a simulation-ready rig. The new ZAT tools include:

  • New Ziva Anatomy Transfer (ZAT) deformers for transferring creature geometry from a source creature onto a new creature.
  • New Python scripts that wrap common zBuilder functionality to transfer Ziva rigs from (parts of a) source creature onto a new creature.
  • New “Ziva Transfer” menu for faster access to ZAT features.
  • New option in the “Ziva Menu" for erasing all Ziva rigs in a selected Ziva solver, or from the entire Maya scene.
“We used Ziva to simulate the ferocious Megalodon in The Meg. But, on top of that, we used Ziva’s Anatomy Transfer tools to generate the hundreds of other sharks that appear in the film as well. This capability saved us an enormous amount of time and effort. We're thrilled this tool is in Ziva VFX 1.6!"

– Sue Rowe, VFX Supervisor, Sony Picture Imageworks

Warping Assets

To implore Ziva VFX users to get started faster with ZAT, all Ziva VFX 1.6 paid customers receive a complimentary, simulation-ready copy of Zeke the Lion, Ziva's flagship quadruped. Zeke has undergone extensive iterations and revisions over the course of the past two years. The asset is complete with over 132 individual muscle tissues and an optimized fat/skin layer with approximately 880,000 collision points. This asset will be provided along with a high-fidelity cheetah model known as Lila the Cheetah. Users will be able to manipulate, warp, and replicate the high-quality Zeke passes and transfer them to Lila. These assets will help users practice and perfect the warping workflow so they can achieve film-quality characters faster.

Click here to learn more about Zeke the Lion:

For users wanting to improve and practice their bi-pedal or feature animation Anatomy Transfer skills, the Oid Alien model has been added to the Ziva Free Store. Artists are encourages to download the popular Mr. Ink asset and practice applying his bulky, muscular anatomy to the Oid Alien. Elementary tutorial videos outlining this process can be watched here.

Click here to download Mr. Ink.

Click here to download Zeke the Lion & Lila the Cheetah.
(Only for paid subscription holders)

Speed & Tool Improvements

In addition to the ZAT capabilities, Ziva VFX 1.6 also includes significant speed improvements and tool updates.
Users can expect a 15-20% simulation speed increase– making it even faster to simulate your rapidly-generated creatures.

Additionally, the new zRivetToBone deformer and command can be used to drive zLineOfAction curves without introducing cycles in the dependency graph. Having this node as a standardized approach for driving zLineOfAction curves simplifies scripting and improves script portability.

July 23, 2018

With your help, I can now transfer the anatomy from Max (only geometry) to another 3D model with ease. But I still can not figure out how to transfer anatomical properties with the method you explain above, and I have tried to use the muscles pass from ZivaAnatomy (Max) as the source. Should I set material properties, create Ziva Fixed Attachments, Sliding Attachment for my new character again, or you have already ideas how to reuse this information from Ziva Anatomy to a new character.

December 14, 2018

Hi good people at Ziva. Thank you for contributing and helping the community, really helps a lot reading trough this forum. I have an issue with tissue mirroring. I managed to mirror it with:

import zBuilder.zMaya
zBuilder.zMaya.rename_ziva_nodes()

All my nodes are symmetrically named and all that, but when I mirror it I get this result. Right side is corrupted, and it doesn't transfer my line of action curves. Am I missing some big step? Do I have to recreate my rivets/clusters/curves and plug them manually? Also I found this bug that it won't mirror from Left to Right (naming wise), only from R to L. Thank you in advance for your help,