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

Actually I seem to recall I had to add the TransformPoint in because setting the Handles.matrix value didnt work, so it would seem it now does work to the handles are being double transformed before being displayed. So a an easier fix could be changing line 397 of MegaShapeEditor.cs to:

Code (csharp):

1. Handles.matrix = Matrix4x4.identity;

I hope to get 3.5 setup on another machine later so I can try this all out

 

Ta. I just tried that fix. It fixes the visual problem but the mouse position when clicked is being transformed inappropriately somewhere, so clicking on a properly positioned knot or handles fails to work (but clicking where the knot would have been shown (incorrectly) without that fix works). So for now I will stick with my more long-winded fix.

 

I have been meaning to ask you a couple of things about mesh instances.

When you try 3.5, can you take a look at whether it is possible to come up with a method where the new particle system can utilise meshes that have been generated or modified by Mega-Fiers? It might be trivial to get working but I haven't quite managed it yet.

Not sure if this also applies to versions prior to 3.5 of Unity or not, but If I turn a MegaShape which generates a mesh into a prefab, the Mesh Filter of the prefab gets set to none. When trying to use the resulting prefab, can fix the issue by either unticking and reticking Make Mesh, or selecting the menu option 'Reset Mesh Info' but wasn't sure if there was a better way to handle this stuff.

There is another scenario where I could use more control over mesh instances if its possible. If I duplicate an object which has a modifier on it, then the duplicate uses the same instance of the mesh as the original object. This is actually quite handy in some situations, e.g. much like my particle request there are times when its nice for performance reasons to have multiple instances of a mesh thats only being MegaFied once. But on occasions where I want to copy the same base object but make tweaks to the way this instance of it is modified, so that its not doing the same thing as the original, I find myself having to jump through a few hoops to create a new mesh for MegaFiers to modify.

 

Aha the issue I just mentioned when a MegaShape mesh is turned into a prefab, also seems to be happening with other sorts of meshes when MegaFied and then turned into a prefab. I don't remember this problem ages ago because I vaguely remember that the solution to my confusion about getting a unique mesh instance when duplicating stuff was to use prefabs, so they can't have been broken then. 3.5 issue or I've temporarily lost my mind?

 

I will have a look at that, if all else fails it wouldn't be too hard to add a button to create a fresh new mesh out of the current state. The whole prefab and shared mesh thing all seemed a little broken with Unity if you want things to happen in the editor as well as at runtime hence the sharedMesh error all editor mesh systems give such as ezGUI and RageSpline as well as MegaFiers and I have put off changing the system until 3.5 appeared in the hope that things were a little clearer so hopefully I can get a nice solution figured out.

 

Thanks elbows- I'm going to try your fixes.

And Chris, the same thing happens in the RC1 release of 3.5 too, but you probably are already on it.

Any idea on a 3.5 release? I know it's beta- but I have a feeling a lot of people are on it already now that the Release candidate is out.
Thanks again.

C-

 

Hope to get on that soon, hopefully the fixes needed for 3.5 wont break the 3.4 version, I cant really do a 3.5 version until actual release as the Asset Store will limit the download to users of 3.5 and above only and I need to keep it compatible on the Asset store with older versions so current users can get updates through the store. But the changes should work on 3.4.

 

Yeah- I totally understand that.

If you need someone to test, I have 3.4 and 3.5 running on separate machines and I use Maya if that helps.

Thanks Chris-

C-

 

Hi SpookyCat, this might be a dummy question, I have bought the megafiers from unity asset store, but when I use 3dsmax to export character including morph animation to .spl file (as the tutorial video does), there is no choice for me to choose, how can I export to .spl file ?? If there is an exporter then please give me some idea how I can get it ??? Hope you reply me soon cause I'm working with morph animation for my game project in company. Thank you so much.

 

Hi Emperor1412
Thank you getting the system If you pm or email me the invoice number and which version of max you use and whether it is the 64 or 32 bit version I will get the exporter to you.
Chris

 

On this page (at the bottom !) you can see in my video tutorial how I easily combine the great Megafiers and Brain Builder plugins to flip pages with the mouse, without writing code :

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/110664-Brain-Builder-Make-games-without-writing-code/page4

(Thanks SpookyCat for your kind comments on Youtube !)

6R

 

Hey Chris-

Any word on a 3.5 build? I'm finding I'll be using this a lot- and I've gone too far down the rabbit hole on my project to take it to 3.4.
Thanks!

C-

 

It will be coming soon, should be this week been super busy on support, new products and updating MegaFiers code, I have finally got another machine setup with 3.5 so should be able to get sometime checking out the issues for you.

 

Hey I am Using Unity 3.4 and am wondering if I missed anything because so far none of the modifiers or scripts related to your plugin work - as in I add em to the character and midify the values - all of em and no change occurs at all, whats up with that?
Do I have to enable some settings like deferred rendering or something or ? ....

 

Hi CollapseDev
Have you first added the 'Mega Modify Object' component, add that first then add the deformations. The Mega Modify Object is the manager of the stack of deformations you add and is the final mesh builder.
Chris

 

Ok I got that to work - I reccommend you cleanup those scripts as their appear to be numerous with the same or similar names and some real documentation and tutorials would be useful. If none of the scripts work without Mega Modify Object then you should add MMO automatically instead of having that selected manually, also one Question How Safe are these modifiers?

FFDShow - lets say I have 50 tree prefabs all with FFDSHow enabled - each modified uniquely - can I rely on these modifiers stability wise?
Also which are the most FPS degrading modifiers? What do you plan to add in the future?

 

Your actually missing a lot of important things on the FFD Modifers - one of those being multiple select - like Control Select to move multiple vertices at a time, also pressing CTR + Z to undo a movement will result in the removal of the entire modifier.
I want to ask is that possible to shift Select 2 or more pointers and move em only with the Move tool and use the Pan tool to ONLY Select instead of moving, will give more control. at current you can only move 1 point a time making that pretty unefficient and tedious....

ALSO Perhaps most important of all their is no activate / deactivate option like their is for a script - such as option is a must - that should be easy implement - you simple deactivate the modifier or vice versa to see comparisons etc

 

@CollapseDev - Is the MegaFiers Website not enough docs for you, or all the video tutorials on the MegaFiers Youtube page or the fact you can right click the inspector bar of any modifier and be taken to a help page for that modifier. And if you want ease of use then use the MegaFiers window where you can add modifiers with one click and have the modify object script added automatically.

Plus not sure what you mean by no activate or deactivate for each modifier because there most certainly is on my MegaFiers try looking in the common params in the inspector. Seems you haven't bothered looking at the docs or info that is available at all.

 

As MikeUpchat said I think there is a fair bit of docs and tutorials out there to help you along And you can always ask here or email me direct.
There arn't many scripts with similiar names it seems to me, the easiest way of adding components is to either use the Components/MegaFiers menu or open up the MegaFiers helper window for easy adding of modifiers. And as mentioned each modifier has its own enabled value so you can easily turn them on and off.

I haven't added the multi select of FFD handles etc as until now no one has wanted them, with FFD most people seem to use it via scripting to deform shapes but I can have a look at adding such features in future versions.

The more expensive modifiers would probably be things like path deform and FFD but they are all pretty fast and it really does depend on your vertex count.

With prefabs you should know that changing a value on one prefab will update all the others so if you want to have a lot of objects and have different params you will be better off not using prefabs. The prefab system is being updated for 3.5 so maybe things will get a little better in that respect. As for stability no one has reported the system crashes or anything so think you are safe there.

As for new features check the blog for updates, but I do take feature requests if there are things you would like to see in the system so if you have something just post it here.

 

Ok Thanks, do you think you could add blend normal maps or something like that - I have seen demonstrations of people blending between normal maps to mimick facial expressions like creases in skin such as dimples and wrinkles etc - I think that would be pretty easy to add for somone at your skill level. But things like that are features Unity always should of had.

Oh and about that displacement modifier - does that require a lot of Verts or are you using some other method?
If your using verts I want you to check out if you could add a Releif Shader / Script / Modifier - or something like that which basically elevated flat surfaces without the need for anything other than 4 verts to support the plain, an example can be found here :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3aoQpECaU0

Here is a REAL World Application for things like Strategy games where you hover over a world map etc:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_erYebogWUw&feature=related

I really do think those two shaders / modifiers / scripts alone perfected and influenced by you will raise Mega Fiers even further....

Perhaps other ones would be advanced Rim Light shaders- basically getting better lighting and shades on Objects - I noticed trying to get visually solid skin shades in Unity is rather difficult - in fact no shader I have seen has accomplished this BUT my experience with Rim Lights has shown results as you can emit several rays in a way or two - If you want to experiment with this then go ahead - if you really want to you could try a Mega Shader Pack lol which has all things advanced shader related. Shaders are really important and Unity still has some improving to do in Lighting wise. With some tinkering you could get some good but anyone can see the difference between engines like Crysis....but I think their are ways that are great and easy by simply thinking outside the box. Some thoughts for ya.
This really is one of the best asset store items

 

Arr I think you perhaps misunderstood a little When I said requests for features I mean for modifiers not complete other systems, I have enough of those to be working on. Blending between textures is something else for another system, I do have some texture based systems done but that would be another product but blending normal maps would be best done in a shader anyway. As for doing a shader pack there are already some mighty fine shaders on the asset store that will do most things you need and if they dont then those authors are in a much better place to add what you need

The displace modifier does need vertices to work on so a simple quad is not good. Anyway glad you have got it all working and thank you for your final comment

 

Chris,

I've been struggling with something in the Morph ... is it possible to have multiple objects morphing with a single .mor file? Everything I've done trying to figure out a workflow ends in either a .mor that won't load at all, or only one of the objects that should morph works and the others don't.

The other issue that keeps coming up for some reason is that when I delete the history on my objects in Maya (thereby deleting the blend shapes so that I can recreate them), multiple morph sliders end up showing up in Unity, and some are broken. Using the Maya 2012-64bit exporter.

Another note: I've also tried to "export selected" seperately on the objects to generate multiple .mor scripts, but that didn't resolve it either.

Hopefully it helps clear things up if I give the example: I create a Cube and a Plane. Delete History and Duplicate them. Modify the verts on both objects. Set up the blend shape. NOTE: I've tried leaving the objects seperate, combining and deleting history, grouping, etc... nothing works as I would expect.

Your tools are awsome and I'm hoping if you know a workaround, we can resolve this. Thanks much!!!

 

Hi Chris

Long time no see.
I am waiting for the feature like LocoRoco.
Have you already decided the name of the feature?
I sometimes check when is completed the feature, but I'm not sure the name..

 

@albinochicken - No you cant do multiple objects in one mor file, it made more sense to me that to do one object at at time since in Unity you are editing one object at a time and if mor files dealt with multiple objects it just seemed to confuse things, things like names of objects would have to not be edited or else when loading a complex mor file with many objects every object in the file would have to checked against every morphing object in the scene to see if it needs updating which could lead to a mess so I went with individual mor files. You need to create one mor file for each object. I am not a Maya user but it seems that some of the history hasn't been deleted, the exporter just asks the object for its blendshape info and exports that so not sure what I can do about that, if Maya says there is a blendshape I export it. If you can email me an example of a broken maya file I can try and figure out what Maya is up to. From the example you give of a cube and plane I am surprised you can get that to morph correctly in Maya how does Maya know which vertex to map to another?

@shinriyo - That feature hasn't been added yet it has been started but I have been busy with support and adding other features and new products.

 

Saw your blog post on your new system, do you have a date for release for that? Looks very cool.

 

New product looks cool! (and a gentle prodding for the existing one to work on 3.5 ) Any word?

 

Thanks to the great Megafiers plugin I easily can make animations for my Blob as you can see here in my actual project using Tidy Tile Mapper and Brain Builder too...

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/122515-A-demo-of-my-Game-using-Tidy-Tile-Mapper-Megafiers-and-Brain-Builder?p=823425#post823425

6R

 

Hey Chris,

I just watched the Rope Bridge Video and wondered if it's possible to make automatically rag-doll Objects or simplier than with the unity joints method ?

 

@ChuckT - No word just yet, busy with support and the other systems just at the minute, kinda hoping the final release of 3.5 comes along soon. I would do it sooner but I am down to a single machine at the moment and although one can install 3.5 separately in the past doing so has led to mistakes by me in using wrong versions and projects have been converted etc so just holding off until either a machine becomes available of 3.5 gets a proper release. (mind you the test scene could probably do with a make over it)

@p6r - Nice job again Phillipe, you do seem to be a bit of a master of the big extensions to Unity and it is rather nice how you use them together. Hope you dont mind but I do post your videos on the MF facebook page.

@Soulart - That is something I do hope to have a go at when things get a little less frantic, the rope bridge was the first of a physics based set of modifiers that I am working on, dont want to say too much in case I cant deliver quickly but there should be some fun additions coming soon.

 

No problem... SpookyCat !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm very happy if my video tutorials can be useful...

6R

 

(in case anyone else has this problem):
downloaded latest version couldn't find MegaFiers in the Windows menu -
went into MegaFiersWindow.cs changed the line

[MenuItem("Component/MegaFiers")]
to
[MenuItem("Window/MegaFiers")]
and all is well.

 

(in case anyone else has this problem):
downloaded latest version couldn't find MegaFiers window listed in the Windows menu -
went into MegaFiersWindow.cs changed the line

[MenuItem("Component/MegaFiers")]
to
[MenuItem("Window/MegaFiers")]
and all is well.

 

(in case anyone else has this problem):
downloaded latest version couldn't find MegaFiers window listed in the Windows menu -
went into MegaFiersWindow.cs changed the line

[MenuItem("Component/MegaFiers")]
to
[MenuItem("Window/MegaFiers")]
and all is well.

 

Thanks Phoberman but I did actually mean for it to be in the Component Menu as that is where people go to add the MegaFier components anyway so made more sense to have the option in view there but I understand my logic not be to everyone's liking Sp thanks for showing others how to change its location. If the consensus is that people would rather have it in the Windows menu then I shall update the code so future updates dont move it back.

 

Following on from my earlier thoughts about handling of mesh instances in a number of scenarios, most interestingly to try megafied objects with the new 3.5 particle system, I had another thought. I was thinking that perhaps there are some scenarios where it would be nice to morph between two instances of a mesh that have already been megafied in different ways. But I haven't thought of all the implications or possible uses of this yet. Does it make any sense?

Also Im sure you love my boring reports about multi-threading glitches so I resisted posting about this one for a while, but since Im posting anyway I may as well say that I see a little flickering on the Weight Test object in the demo scene when threading is enabled.

Just had cause to skim through the whole thread looking for something and it reminded me of the epic evolution of this product in all its glory. My word you have added so much value to Unity

 

Wahey, turns out it was easy to write a script that enables the Unity 3.5 Shuriken particle system to use MegaFied meshes. I was hoping it was just a question of overcoming the inability to select the MegaFied mesh in the editor interface for the particle renderer, and that does seem to have been enough, although my testing has been rather limited so far.

For example attaching the following javascript to the game object that has a Shuriken particle system, making sure particle renderer is set to mesh, and dragging the game object that contains the megafied mesh you want to use to the Megafied Object script variable is enough to get a result. And yes the particle instances are animated if your original megafied object is animated

Code (csharp):

1. public var MegafiedObject: GameObject;
2.  
3. function Start () {
4.     var megamesh: Mesh = MegafiedObject.GetComponent(MeshFilter).sharedMesh;
5.     GetComponent(ParticleSystemRenderer).mesh = megamesh;
6. }

 

actually, it wasn't that I have any preference about which menu it was in, the odd thing is that it wasn't showing up in the Components menu (or anywhere) until I changed it.

 

3.5 has arrived! 2 weeks left on my project I got Megafiers for. Any shot at a new release in the next week-ish?

 

Hi Chris

I have a problem when importing morph file. The error is mapping failed.

I've did this before and working but for whatever reason, it's giving me mapping failed error now.

I'm using unity pro, 3ds max 2012, fbx 2012 exporter and megafier plugin for 3ds max.

Thanks for your help and btw this megafier is really awesome!!

 

You must be on Unity 3.5

 

@ChuckT - Will be getting 3.5 installed today on my work machine and getting a new release ready hopefully by the end of the day.

@hay78 - Mapping failures is nearly always down to 1 or 2 issues, either pivots have been played with on the base mesh or targets so they no longer match in some way, or you are exporting from an animated character that isnt in the pose mode that the fbx shows. If you cant figure out which it is and you are able then email the max file to me and I will have a look.

 

Changes for 3.5 have been made but it seems the Asset Store tools do not work with 3.5 so waiting on Unity to fix that.

 

Awesome! Any chance on the ability to set the starting point on a particle cloud animation?

Thanks

 

Hi Chris


Thanks for giving me the solution. I've fixed this by "reset xform" on top of the skin modifier.
It's a bit of both actually, i moved the pivot and export animated character in animate mode.

I'm not sure it's the way to go, but it works for now.

I'm using biped and skin for the characters. I've exported the character on animate mode (NOT in figure mode), will there be problem later on?
They're working nicely at the moment though

 

The reset x form on top of skin modifier was working for one part but not the other. SO i just have to delete the skin and other modifiers, reset x form and reskin again. and it works now

 

Hey Chris- Any shot at a release for 3.5 by the weekend? Thanks!

 

It's kinda in Unitys hands now they need to fix the bugs they have with the Asset store tools that stop them working with 3.5, they said a couple of working days yesterday so I am rather hoping they put up some new tools today.

 

Was this in response to my post about how to use a MegaFied mesh with the 3.5 particle system?

Im not completely sure what your question means. But you need to consider the fact that a single particle system is only using 1 instance of a mesh, so all of the particles will be showing the same mesh, at the same point within its animation. So a system that linked the age of a particle to the animation point would only work properly if only 1 particle was alive at a time. You could expand on this further by using multiple particle systems, tied to different mesh instances, but I doubt this will scale well beyond just a few simultaneous particles, and it may be questionable as to whether there is much point using a particle system at all, rather than instantiating meshes in the traditional way.

I don't know how extensible the particle system might be, whether there is a way to improve on this, but again Im not sure how much point there is in trying to take it this far, since having many particles all doing separate instances of MegaFier mesh modifications is likely to be quite a performance drain. If there was some clever way to buffer the resulting meshes at each step of their animation, and then use the pre-deformed buffered versions with the particle renderer rather than recalculate the MegaFier operation on every particle every frame, perhaps it could perform ok, but this is currently well beyond my capabilities and its early days for seeing how much great use people will have for mesh particles in general.

Or maybe I totally misunderstood the question or have an error in my understanding of how this stuff works.

 

Having said all that my mind drifts back towards a question I pondered here some days ago, about whether there would be performance benefits to having an additional method of moving between different MegaFied meshes without recalculating everything each time.

Previously I mentioned a version of this stuff where you would be able to take a mesh, Megafy it in some way, store the result. Then Megafy it in a different way, and store the result. Then at runtime you can morph between these states (and the original mesh). This would have merit if the morphing operation involves less computation than the full-on Megafication.

But there would be limits to this, e.g. simply morphing between the start and end mesh state of an animation where an objects bend angle is changing over time, would not look the same as actually bending it over time as we currently do with MegaFiers. So taking this idea a step further, we could imagine a system where by an evolving Megafied animation takes place and is calculated once, with every 'frame' of the resulting mesh being stored. Then at runtime a script can flip between each of these frames, rather than doing the full Megacalculation each time.

This is not a million miles away from something I mentioned a while ago that Id been doing in a very crude way that didn't involve Megafiers. I was taking fluid animations from blender and bringing them into unity by baking each frame into a separate mesh, and then just flipping between the different meshes at runtime to create an animation.

Perhaps if any of the above have any merit but its not something that the developer wants to add to MegaFiers at the moment, then its something that a separate 'mesh animation baker' system could be developed to handle. Im not exactly sure what the downsides might be, I guess there could be issues of file size, ram, or inefficient usage of GPU if not done carefully?

 

A simpler way of describing what I mean is that when it comes to playback it would be a system just like your PointCache importer. But there would be the ability for MegaFiers to create the PointCache itself within unity, based on a mesh being MegaFied in an evolving way over some time period.

My entire rationale for considering this stuff is that there may be a performance advantage to pre-calculating the Megafied mesh, so it would be good to know how heavy point cache playback or morphing are compared to the other modifiers.