TYPE: Object State
TITLE: Capture Geometry Operation

The Capture Geometry operation lets you capture one or more geometry objects as
the skin for a hierarchy of bones.

The first prompt is to select the geometry objects to capture. In the second
prompt, you select the root object of your bones (the skeleton). This does not
have to be a bone but any object that is a parent of all the bones that you want
captured. Typically, this is a Null object that is an ancestor of your entire
skeleton. If the root is hard to pick in the viewport, you may find it easier to
select it in the network pane.

The geometry points will be coloured to show the weighting contribution of the
captured bones, if any. Points coloured white after the capture have not been
captured by any bones. The color contribution of each point is based upon the
object wire color of its captured bones.

CAPTURE METHOD PARAMETER 

The Capture Method parameter specifies the method of capturing. The Regions
method will capture points using the capture regions of each bone to decide
which point is captured. This method may not capture all points initially if
some points are outside of all capture regions in the skeleton hierarchy. You
can interactively manipulate the size of the regions at any time using the Edit
Capture Regions operation. The advantage of this method is that it will allow
you to also deform using the capture regions later on when animating.

The Proximity method will usually capture all points of your geometry based on
the closest 2 bones. After you are done picking, an on-screen slider will
appear to adjust the drop off effect of the bones. Note that you still may not
capture all points if you lower the drop off too much. For best results, you
will want to adjust your drop off until it just captures all your points. The
advantage of this method is that there is only one control (the dropoff) for
the entire skeleton.

To fully understand what is done behind the scenes for these two methods, you
may wish to look at the SOPs that are added for each of the captured geometry
objects.

CHANNEL GROUP PREFIX AND CAPTURE FRAME PARAMETERS

The Capture Frame parameter specifies the frame number at which to perform the
capturing. Keyframes will be created at this frame on the bone rotation and end
affector transform parameters of the skeleton. This ensures that your capturing
information will not change if you accidentally adjust a non-animated parameter
that modifies the capture frame.

The Channel Group Prefix specifies the string prefix of the channel groups that
are created to hold these newly created channels.

METHOD PARAMETER

The Method parameter controls whether the capturing will replace the last
capture on the geometry or append to it. After the first capture, it will
always append to the existing captures. Appending captures will allow you to
layer onto previous captures. When you are done picking, and on-screen slider
named Blend Factor will appear for you to adjust the blending of the current
capture with the previous capture weights. To edit your captures after doing
multiple captures, use the Edit Capture Blends operation.

WHAT TO DO NEXT

After capturing the geometry, use Pose to animate the bones and see if any
capture weights need tweaking. If so, experiment with editing capture regions
(procedurally) or with Paint/Edit Capture Weights.  Mirror Capture Weights will
come in handy if you have painted or hand-edited the weights of one limb and
want them reflected automatically to save time.

See also: Edit Capture Blends(editcaptureblend),
	  Edit Capture Regions(editcaptureregion),
	  Edit Capture Weights(editcaptureweight),
          Paint Capture Weights(paintcapture),
	  Mirror Capture Weights(mirrorcapture), Pose
