Setting up variations

Let's open the man.ma scene.

You can create other render layers for defining variation combinations. Their names will become the variation names.
Please keep in mind the variation builder does not support render or material overrides, if you are planning to modify the material for a geometry on a render layer you should duplicate it and modify the new material.

Let's open the hypershade and create a new lambert material, set the diffuse color to red and name it "tshirtRed".

If you are planning to add a LOD to a variation, please create a new variation layer and label it so that the name starts with the variation name followed by a four underscores ("____") and the LOD name.

Now open the render setup window, then:

• Create two render layers and name them variation1 and variation2
• Select all the geos under the SKIN group from the outliner
• Create a collection for "variation1" and press on the "Add" button to add the geometries to the collection.
• Create two collections for "variation2" and select the first one.
• Select all the geometries except the tshirt_GEO in the outliner and press on the "Add" button to add the geometries to the collection.
• Select the second collection. Select tshirt_GEO and add it to the collection.
• Create a Shader override for the second collection and assign the tshirtRed material to the override.

You should end up with something like the pictures on the right.

Variation Builder

Once you are happy with your set up, please open the variation builder from the menu: Atoms > Variations > Variation Builder .

Then do the following:

• type "man" in the Agent Type field.
• select the destination json file by typing its path or selecting it with a browser.
• Browse to the skeleton definition file that you can find in the Atoms Crowd data folder or to the file you exported during the agent type configuration.
• Select the Hips joint and click the Refresh button.
• Check "Simple material conversion"
• Check "Bake Textures"

Leave everything else as it is and click on the Run button.
Your variations files will be be exported.

Variation Randomizer

Now open a new scene and initialize it. Then from the menu select  Atoms > Variations > Import Variation Json and browse to the json file you just exported.

Then do the following:

• create a new agent group
• add a grid layout and set the size (4, 1, 4)
• add a state machine module
• set the display type for your agent group to "variations"
• open the variation randomizer: Atoms > Variations > Variation Randomizer
• select the man item from the list on the left and press on the middle arrow button. 
• press the Run button and close the Variation Randomizer window.

All your agents should have a variation now.

To double check which variation got applied to an agent, please select the variations module from the agent group UI in the Attribute Editor and open the override dialog for the "variation" field.

We can create a plane and an Arnold skydome light, then render the current frame.