You can create an Agent Group by using the shelf button or via the Atoms Menu: Atoms > Create Agent Group.
Setting up the agent group
Please make sure the attribute editor is visible and select the agent group node.
Click on the "Add" button and add a gridLayout module. Type the agent type name you entered previously in the "agentType" field (i.e. testRobot).
Set the "size" field to (3,0,3).
Then do one of the followings:
- Click again on the "Add" button and add a stateMachine module. Click on the rewind button of Maya time slider and your agent will appear in the viewport.
- Click again on the "Add" button and add a clipReader module. Type the animation clip name you entered previously in the "clipName" field (i.e. robotWalk).
Click on the rewind button of Maya time slider and your 9 agents will appear in the viewport.
Atoms Group GUI
With an agent group selected you will see the widget in the picture in the attribute editor.
The Agent Group GUI is divided in several sections:
- The modules list. From here you can add Behaviour Modules to your Agent Group. As explained in the Introduction, Behaviour modules are used to customize your simulation. Each agent group has a stack of them which defines the behaviour of its agents. In the picture we added a gridLayout and a stateMachine modules.
From this list you can add and remove modules, or move their position in the stack. - Module Options. Here you can edit the module attributes. Each module attribute is actually a Maya attribute, so depending on its type it can be connected or animated to any other Maya attribute.
Whenever you see this icon
next to an attribute, that means the attribute is overridable per agent. The icon turns green as any agent override is set. In the case of the picture, you might want to give to your agents a different state or make them playing with a different frameRate to speed up or slow down their animation. - Settings. Here you can set the display type for your agent to: none, skeleton, mesh and skin. The mesh mode displays the proxy mesh, the skin mode displays the skinned mesh with textures and the skeleton mode will draw the agent skeletons. With the "none" mode the simulation will still be happening in the background, but you won't have any OpenGL overhead.
From this section, you can also activate the agents selection tool, clear your agent selection or rewind your sim. - Draw Metadata. From time to time you might need to see visually the metadata values for your agents. By ticking the "Draw Metadata" box and adding any metadata to the list at the bottom, Atoms will draw the metadata values per in the viewport. You can also change the font color and size, use a background color and apply an offset to the text.
