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[Released] Mega-Fiers. A mesh deformation system - RELEASE

Discussion in 'Assets and Asset Store' started by SpookyCat, May 18, 2011.

  1. onllm

    onllm

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    thanx for the demo..waiting for the page generator from you
     
  2. paul.harden

    paul.harden

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    now that i've seen the video.. I'll absolutely, positively stop trying to do pageflipping with the morph deformer.. But isn't it a little sadic to publish the video before making the book script available? ;-))
     
  3. SpookyCat

    SpookyCat

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    Sorry for the delay, so many things to do :) The script is below, it is just a quickie system so excuse that, I will do a improved system when the work load reduces a wee bit.
    Chris
     

    Attached Files:

    • $Book.cs
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  4. SpookyCat

    SpookyCat

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    Hi Pkid, that will be part of the new book system I am planning, this script was just knocked up to make the PageFlip video guide a little more interesting and useful, the new system will have proper spine, page droop and a better more pleasing page turner, but dont ask for a date for that, I still have the demo to finish, all the videos for the other modifiers and the new Max system support to finish. Not enough hours in the day. I blame Unity for being too much fun to work with :)
    Chris
     
  5. MikeUpchat

    MikeUpchat

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    MegaFiers being used in an interesting way.
     
  6. pixelsteam

    pixelsteam

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    Really fantastic, I wonder what they used for the touch control.

     
  7. p6r

    p6r

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    Wonderful !!!

    6R
     
  8. pixelsteam

    pixelsteam

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    Wow, well I finally got the chance to play with this today...and this is the best asset on the Unity Store!!! Bar none.
    Sorry to be such a fanboy, but this REALLY amplifies Unity.

    Great job man...and my name is not P6r;)
     
  9. p6r

    p6r

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  10. SpookyCat

    SpookyCat

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    Thank you, good to hear it lives up to your hopes for it and I hope you get as much fun out of it and as many uses as p6r does with his great fun ideas and interesting ways of using the system :)

    On another note it seems as more and more assets are used from the stores there are more cases of class name clashes, Caitlyn emailed me about one in MegaFiers with advanced water (displace) so it seems somewhere along the line a rename of classes is going to be needed such as putting a 'MF' on the front of everything or something, this will break current apps if the new MegaFiers is applied to a project. So the question is should the pain come all at once with a global rename of everything to stop any issues in the future or a piecemeal approach of changing only the offending classes as they come up? Any views?
    Thanks
    Chris
     
  11. p6r

    p6r

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    I have added a video to show how to creante a morph animation with Mega-Fiers :



    6R
     
  12. p6r

    p6r

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    Actually, I’m working on mega-fiered toon stones for a toon castle for example. (Like LEGOS ! Problem with the drawcalls !?!)

    * With a bended stone we can build tower... Thanks to the value I can bend exactly how much I need to have a perfect circle with several stones for the tower !
    * Then with a simple rippled plane (rotation -> X = -90) I can add a kind of grass between the stones on the wall !



    6R
     
  13. elbows

    elbows

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    I vote for full pain now, in order to put the issue to bed in a comprehensive way.
     
  14. soldmeadow

    soldmeadow

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    +1 for full pain.
     
  15. pixelsteam

    pixelsteam

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    In for the pain now please.
     
  16. Rafes

    Rafes

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    You could provide a list of classes that are used by users and what they will be called in the new release. That way people can use their IDEs to do the rename in a couple of clicks, then import your new release. In VS C# if you rename any variable a little red bar appears below the last letter. If you click this and choose the rename option, it will fix your entire solution/project (all files). MUCH better than search-and-replace.
     
  17. Zeronine

    Zeronine

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    sehr gut! inspiring very nice to see all the great works being made with Mega-Fiers.

     
  18. 3Duaun

    3Duaun

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    +1 for full pain as well, the sooner, and more complete the rename, the better imo
     
  19. p6r

    p6r

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    +1 for full pain...

    6R
     
  20. onllm

    onllm

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    bring on the pain
     
  21. Zeronine

    Zeronine

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    pain prime.
     
  22. droderick

    droderick

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    loving megafiers!

    It's truly amazing and we can't wait to use it for upcoming projects.

    can't wait for the modify group!

    thanks again.
     
    Last edited: Aug 16, 2011
  23. huxley

    huxley

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    Hello, we are looking at the megafiers for mesh morphing. We currently have a morphing solution, but it requires that the base and target meshes are set to

    Normals = Import
    Tangents = None

    Setting tangent to "none" prevents our shaders which require them from working, so we need a solution that allows tangents to be set to "Calculate". Will megafiers work if we have our FBX import Tangents mesh settings to "Calculate"?

    Thanks.
     
  24. SpookyCat

    SpookyCat

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    Hi There

    The system has an option to calculate tangents for deformed meshes so that isn't a problem in MegaFiers, and I have tested it with bump shaders and it all works nicely.

    As for normals in the current version I use the Unity RecalulateNormals function for updating the normals after the mesh has been morphed and deformed so in most cases that works well and as expected but in more complex meshes with uv seams or smoothing groups it can produce unwanted results so the next version of MegaFiers has a custom normal calculator that gives totally expected results on such problem meshes, it is a tiny bit slower but not much and most of the time you wont need it, its just some of the meshes for our game had complex smoothing and uv seams and the artist insisted I fix that :)

    Just in case you didnt know there is full docs on the system at The MegaFiers Docs Website and if you look at the Modify Object page you can see the various recalc options you havem ie normals, bounds, tangents, colliders.

    Chris
     
    Last edited: Aug 16, 2011
  25. p6r

    p6r

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  26. murdoch_69

    murdoch_69

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    Mega-Fiers seems to be awesome so far (thanks!) However I am having some troubles trying to get a piece of paper to roll up. In 3DS Max I use the bend modifier on a very thin box - following this tutorial - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAMul131Avc

    However, I can't seem to get this to translate in Unity using Mega-Fiers. I'm sure it is extremely simple and I am doing something stupid - but I don;t suppose someone could point me in the right direction?
     
  27. SpookyCat

    SpookyCat

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    Hi Murdoch
    I just had a go at that and got it to work, the axis is set to Y in my case as the PageMesh I started from is orientated differently from Max boxes. There are a couple of shots showing the settings below, and the rollup can be animated by changing the Gizmo Pos z value in this case, and the tightness of the roll by changing the Angle value.
    Hope that helps.
    Chris
     

    Attached Files:

    Aria_Persian likes this.
  28. SpookyCat

    SpookyCat

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    You can go one better with a little bit of Gizmo Rot on the x axis you can actually get it to roll up properly as shown below :) That's the fun part of MegaFiers just playing with the values and seeing what falls out :)
    Chris
     

    Attached Files:

    Aria_Persian likes this.
  29. murdoch_69

    murdoch_69

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    Chris - you are a legend! That is totally awesome, I knew it could do it - and thanks so much for the very swift response!

    I also added a slight gizmo X rotation, which makes it not look like its rolling up into itself.

    This has made my day, thanks again!!
     
  30. murdoch_69

    murdoch_69

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    Hah! you got there before me with the X rotation!!
     
  31. huxley

    huxley

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    Everything is working great Chris. We did a test with an animated skinned mesh and a blended Mega-Fiers Morph Animation and it worked fine.
     
  32. SpookyCat

    SpookyCat

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    Good news tinyutopia :) Hope you find the rest of it as easy and nice to use, looking forward to seeing any results :)
    Chris
     
  33. MikeUpchat

    MikeUpchat

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    The rolling up carpet thing is very clever, just tried it, it works so well. It is so clever that in tweaking a couple of params you get such different results from just a small part of the system, it is fun just as it, would be a game on its own where you are given an end result and which deformations to use and you need to recreate it.
     
  34. murdoch_69

    murdoch_69

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    yeah its a little slow when deployed on a iPad2 - but as long as the Mod is only enabled when the rolling or unrolling happening its fine.
     
  35. 3Duaun

    3Duaun

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    thus far, Mega-Fiers has been an absolute go-to tool for our development on desktop. For us, its been a bit too CPU heavy in our iOS development(when testing on an iPhone4) with meshes around 3k, but we've been working on a few ways to optimize it, and have seen progress already. :)

    Thanks to @SpookyCat for his/their awesome work!!! Cant suggest Mega-Fiers enough for Unity development!
     
    Last edited: Aug 18, 2011
  36. huxley

    huxley

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    I am getting this error if I delete or do not import the MegaFier Test Scene folder

    Assets/Scripts/MegaFiers/Modifiers/Modifiers.cs(111,39): error CS0246: The type or namespace name `ModifierTarget' could not be found. Are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?
     
  37. SpookyCat

    SpookyCat

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    Arr yes that is due to a work in progress I was doing on modifying groups of objects so the Modify so the ModifyTarget class is in the ModifyGroup.cs file which is in the scene folder and not part of the main system yet, just move the ModifyObjects.cs file to the main modifers folder and that will go away. Sorry about that.
    Chris
     
  38. droderick

    droderick

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    Hi Chris,
    Any news on when the modify group modifier will be available? Would LOVE to have this feature. thanks much.

    d
     
    Last edited: Aug 23, 2011
  39. SpookyCat

    SpookyCat

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    Hi All
    Finally found the time to do the dreaded rename on the system, everything now has a 'Mega' prefix so there shouldn't be any more clashes with other assets. Please bear in mind that updating to this version of the script will break your project so please back up first

    You can fix the breaks without much effort though all you need to do is go to your object that had a MegaFier component attached and reselect the script for those components by selecting the equivalent script in the script selector for the component, ie each object would have had a ModifyObject.cs component so you replace that with MegaModifyObject.cs. Then deselect the object and select it again and the proper inspector GUI should show up as normal for each component. Then the last step is to right click the MegaModifyObject component header and click Reset then you will find everything is back to the way it was. The exception to this is Morph Channels, you will need to reload the channels or reimport the morph data, sorry about that :(

    I have include the ModifyGroup in this update but it is a WIP and not fully tested. All the changes for V1.39 are:

    • All classes have been renamed with a 'Mega' prefix to avoid conflict with other assets. This will break existing scenes so be aware of that before updating to this new version.

    • Changed MegaShape Position handles for knots etc to FreeHandles as PositionHandles are very very slow in Unity 3.4

    • Changed my tab settings to 4 instead of 2 so code will look nicer for standard 4 space tab settings.

    • ModifyObject.cs file moved to correct folder, deleting test scene wont cause an error now.

    • Added the book maker script MegaBook.cs to the system.
    So version 1.39 should be in the Asset Store anytime now, hope the renaming isn't too painful for all concerned.
    Chris
     
  40. marjan

    marjan

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    Hi, i just bought megafieres and i am trying to use it now.

    For the first test i just want to deform a custom cube with bend. I had some trouble getting it to bend in the right direction but it seams to work now.

    However:
    The Editor (U3.4) is often showing warnings:
    Instantiating mesh due to calling MeshFilter.mesh during edit mode. This will leak meshes. Please use MeshFilter.sharedMesh instead.
    UnityEngine.MeshFilter:get_mesh()
    ModifyObject:FindMesh1(GameObject, GameObject) (at Assets/Scripts/MegaFiers/Modifiers/ModifyObject.cs:188)
    ModifyObject:ReStart1(Boolean) (at Assets/Scripts/MegaFiers/Modifiers/ModifyObject.cs:80)
    ModifyObject:Reset() (at Assets/Scripts/MegaFiers/Modifiers/ModifyObject.cs:56)
    UnityEditorInternal.InternalEditorUtility:InspectorWindowDrag(Object, Boolean)
    UnityEditor.DockArea:OnGUI()

    And sometimes the Mesh seams to be frozen, cant modify any more, need to set everything up again.

    What i basically did:
    1 Create empty GameObject.
    2. Add Components: Meshfilter, Meshrenderer, Modify Object, Bend
    3. Drag a Mesh from a Maya File inside the Mesh renderer. Thats ONE Mesh out of one File with several Meshes inside.

    Thats basically all.

    Another question:
    is it a good idea to make this GameObject a Prefab, so i can later create several instances where i can control different bendsettings on? Or rather not?

    Thanks for a hint!
     
  41. SpookyCat

    SpookyCat

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    Hi Marjan
    Thanks for the support :)

    That error is one that is only due to the live updating in the editor and there is no way around it, all scripts that do live updating have this error ie RageSpline, ezGUI etc and I've been told by other authors and Unity that it can be ignored, it is only an issue in the editor and does not exists during runtime so nothing will leak.

    As for the freezing side that sounds a little odd, if you could do a video or something that shows that behavior I would be grateful, it is something I have yet to see or had any reports about. One possible issue could be that you set the mesh after the ModifyObject and the Bend are applied so you may need to hit reset so the mesh data is copied correctly. Or set the mesh in the filter before adding the ModifyObject component etc. The system looks for a mesh when it is added and if none is present then it will have nothing to do. So try adding the ModifyObject etc after the mesh is setup and see if that solves your issue.

    I haven't done a lot with prefabs but the way I use it is mainly at runtime so I instantiate new objects/meshes and then add the components via code, I need to have a go at prefabs etc to see if any changes are needed.
    Chris
     
  42. DigitalAdam

    DigitalAdam

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    Im interested in designing a character creator for a first person shooter, where the user can change his/her avatars appearance with sliders, and then export those variables to a server. I'd also like the morph to not only effect the character mesh, but also any clothing/gear as well. After watching a couple of videos it seems that I should be able to do so with your tool. Any thoughts and/or suggestions with the best way to set this up?

    Thanks!
     
  43. SpookyCat

    SpookyCat

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    Hi Adam
    If you are only going to be using morphs then obviously you will need morphs on all the bits you want to attach or alter, so if you have that all you need to do is link the 'Percent' values together with a little script so that one slider controls all the attached morphs, that is pretty much the way I plan on using it for our character customizing in our game, though when I finish the ModifyGroup I will be probably use that as an extra layer on top of the morphs for extra flexibility or features without bloating the morph data such as being able to make people tubbier with the bulge modifier or a little bend for older people or adding a FFD to the head to do all sorts of fun to the facial features.

    On a separate note your avatar looks exactly like my brother which is a bit spooky seeing as we are twins :)

    And also to say version 1.39 is in the store now, but do bare in mind you will need to massage your projects a little if you update an existing project which uses MegaFiers (see note above)
    Chris
     
  44. elbows

    elbows

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    I would like report my great joy at getting Evolver character facial blendshapes working just fine with the morph stuff in Mega-Fiers.

    I get the Mixamo version of the character from Evolver, and load it into Cheetah3d on the mac. Then I throw away the meshes that have level of detail I don't want. Save the fbx. Export the base mesh as an obj. Export all the other blend shapes I want as obj's. Bring them into Mega-Fiers in the standard way, and yay it works.

    I know this should not be a great revelation as in theory this should work, but in practice I am well used to having nightmares with this sort of thing so I would just like to congratulate you on doing a fine job of making this stuff work.
     
  45. SpookyCat

    SpookyCat

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    Hi All
    MegaFiers has been out for over 3 months now and has grown from a dozen modifiers to well over 30 and with a morph system added as well, I still have a load of new features and improvements to bring to the system over the coming months such as vertex cache animation, more optimized morphing, support for a new Max based character animation system, weighted vertex morphs and modify groups to name a few. So that's the good news, but with the next version the price will be going up one notch in the Asset store (which for some reason suddenly jumps from $10 increments to $50 after the $100 threshold) this will off course have no effect on anyone who has already got the system so I just wanted to give a nice period where anyone thinking about a purchase can get in before the price goes up.
    Chris
     
  46. SpookyCat

    SpookyCat

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    Hi Elbows
    That's good news, was wondering when someone was going to have a go at that :)
    Chris
     
  47. SpookyCat

    SpookyCat

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    p6r pointed out Gizmos weren't showing up on old projects that updated to v1.39, I forgot to say you need to hit reset on each modifier to get the gizmos back, the modifiers still work you just dont get to see the deformation outline gizmo. Thanks for pointing that out Philippe :)
    Chris
     
  48. Esila

    Esila

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    What changes in v1.39?????
     
  49. SpookyCat

    SpookyCat

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  50. p6r

    p6r

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    I wonder if it was not sufficient to simply reset the "Modify Object" script !?! And it will work for all scripts !?!
    I'm not sure because I have made several manipulations... :)

    6R