MASH blend deformer and falloff

[Steve Davy]

I'm trying to get a progressive blend shape to work using a MASH blend deformer and a falloff object in Add mode. 

The falloff object is traveling on a motion path, and should be causing the blend to progressively take effect along its path. I can see that the blend shape and falloff object are connected as parts of the blend keep showing up, but I can't get anything like the the correct progressive blending effect I want.

I thought this might need to be cached in the same way that is necessary on fallofs on other types of nodes, but since this isn't a MASH network, only a utility, I'm not sure.

Anyone have any ideas (or Ian if you're looking -- help!).

Thanks!

[Ian Waters]

Hey Steve,

If you’ve got the falloff on ‘add’ mode, you’ll need some sort of caching (like making an alembic of the mesh) as it’s a simulation.

I’ve attached a scene so you can check my setup, everything is set to the default except the falloff, which is in add mode.

[Steve Davy]

In fact I'm finding a falloff on a blend deformer doesn't work as expected at all. A simple scene with two identical planes in it with deformations on one of them and a cube falloff passing from one side to the other to add the deformation actually does the wrong half of the plane first!

Pity, I was excited to see the demos for this, but I'm not finding it useable at all...

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From: maya...@googlegroups.com <maya...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Steve Davy <stevi...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2018 4:24 PM
To: Maya Group
Subject: [maya_he3d] MASH blend deformer and falloff

 

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[Steve Davy]

Got better results by setting the falloff object to vertex mode, and also by putting my blend object into a MASH network before creating the blend utility.

However, the only tutorial I can find from Ian for the blend node doesn't do this step -- the blend utility is created directly onto the object without a MASH network being created. Anyone know the correct workflow?

Also, pet peeve -- selecting MASH falloff objects and getting them to show up in the attribute editor is incredibly difficult.

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From: maya...@googlegroups.com <maya...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Steve Davy <stevi...@hotmail.com>

Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2018 10:29 AM
To: maya...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [maya_he3d] Re: MASH blend deformer and falloff

 

[Ian Waters]

That’s right, there’s no need for a MASH network. Did you see the scene I sent?

Whatever vertex id you rollover on one shape will change on the other shape, regardless of transforms, so it’s possible to have the ‘wrong’ side of a shape deform if it’s rotated for example.

And yes, the Falloff should be in Vertex mode (this is set automatically here so it could be a version thing).

Best,

Ian

_ Ian Waters Lead Developer Mainframe 82 Silk Street Manchester M4 6BJ 0161 205 4763 mainframe.co.uk @ianwaters

[Steve Davy]

Hi Ian,

No I didn't get a scene, but I did get it working.... kinda. The falloff node was set to face by default here.

Unfortunately I am finding that MASH just crashes Maya 2018 constantly, so it makes the testing and iteration process quite slow.

Regarding the need to cache the simulation parts of MASH -- this is a bit of a problem, since previewing in Add or Remove node often simply doesn't seem to work which is obviously normally the case with dynamic sims, and caching only necessary to bake it for repeatability. Hopefully this is something that is going to improve with future versions.... 😉

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From: maya...@googlegroups.com <maya...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Ian Waters <water...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2018 1:06 AM
To: maya...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [maya_he3d] Re: MASH blend deformer and falloff