Arc the Dragon

Frequently Asked Questions

 

Arc is very slow. How can I speed it up?

A character with four limbs and two wings is inevitably going to be slower than a biped. Because the calculations slowing the rig down are CPU-related, a proxy rig wouldn't help much. If you do have a low-end PC, you may still benefit from GPU-related alterations, such as unloading textures -- a feature available in the included picker. However, the biggest boost to performance comes from the parallel evaluation feature in Maya 2016.5 and newer (this feature was introduced in 2016, but didn't improve performance much until 2016.5). If using 2016.5 or newer, go into Animation Settings and make sure Evaluation Mode is set to Parallel, and also enable both checkboxes below it. You'll notice drastic speedup in playback and manipulation once controls have at least two keys on them, and you hit play. This is what tells Maya to add these controls to the Parallel Evaluation Graph. In layman's terms, the speed increase arrives once you start animating, but only in Maya 2016.5 or newer.

​

Why aren't my textures loading?

Textures will only load if you have already set your Maya project correctly (File > Set Project). Arc uses a UDIM texture method, and has a few under-the-hood tricks in play to keep the textures live. If these methods break, simply use the included picker to reassign a texture.

​

How do I open the picker?

Arc's picker, which includes the customization panel, uses a third party program called MG Picker. It's a free program that you can download here.

​

Why isn't the picker selecting anything?

If you are animating on a referenced rig, you need to tell the picker what the namespace of the character you want to animate is. To do this, click the big "N" in the top right of MG Picker. Select any of Arc's controls, and click the little arrow to load the namespace.