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

You can delete NeareastPoint.cs and KDTree.cs they are no longer used and no longer form part of the package, again this is a weak point in the Asset Store system not removing unused files but tricky one to do I guess.

 

Hi SpookyCat,

I wanted to test the modifier MegaDinamicRipple but I get the following error and I do not know how to solve.

!CompareApproximately (det, 1.0F, .005f)
UnityEditor.SceneView:.ctor()
IndexOutOfRangeException: Array index is out of range.
MegaDynamicRipple.processRipples (System.Single[] source, System.Single[] dest) (at Assets/Mega-Fiers/Scripts/MegaFiers/Modifiers/MegaDynamicRipple.cs:475)
MegaDynamicRipple.ModLateUpdate (MegaModContext mc) (at Assets/Mega-Fiers/Scripts/MegaFiers/Modifiers/MegaDynamicRipple.cs:92)
MegaModifiers.ModifyObject () (at Assets/Mega-Fiers/Scripts/MegaFiers/Modifiers/MegaModifiers.cs:346)
MegaModifiers.ModifyObjectMT () (at Assets/Mega-Fiers/Scripts/MegaFiers/Modifiers/MegaModifiers.cs:695)
MegaModifyObject.Update () (at Assets/Mega-Fiers/Scripts/MegaFiers/Modifiers/MegaModifyObject.cs:142)
IndexOutOfRangeException: Array index is out of range.
MegaDynamicRipple.splashAtPoint (Int32 x, Int32 y, Single force) (at Assets/Mega-Fiers/Scripts/MegaFiers/Modifiers/MegaDynamicRipple.cs:220)
MegaDynamicRipple.Update () (at Assets/Mega-Fiers/Scripts/MegaFiers/Modifiers/MegaDynamicRipple.cs:516)

 

You need to either get the latest version 1.87 or uncheck the Obstructions box, I forgot to remove a bit of code in 1.86.

 

Not sure if this is the best place to put these but the first tutorial video is up. The first one shows you how to use the new Mega Attach helper to stick objects to deforming meshes.

 

Great feature!

 

Hello again spooky,

I am getting an error when trying to import a morph file. Any clarification on this problem would be helpful. I am not sure what problem it is, because I don't know what the error means.

First part-
Error Loading chunk id StartPoints
UnityEngine.Debug:Log(Object)
MegaParsearse(BinaryReader, ParseBinCallbackType) (at Assets/Mega-Fiers/Editor/MegaFiers/MegaParseEditor.cs:240)
MegaMorphEditor:LoadMorph(BinaryReader) (at Assets/Mega-Fiers/Editor/MegaFiers/MegaMorphEditor.cs:1006)
MegaMorphEditor:MorphCallback(String, BinaryReader) (at Assets/Mega-Fiers/Editor/MegaFiers/MegaMorphEditor.cs:956)
MegaMorphEditorarseFile(String, ParseClassCallbackType) (at Assets/Mega-Fiers/Editor/MegaFiers/MegaMorphEditor.cs:917)
MegaMorphEditor:LoadMorph() (at Assets/Mega-Fiers/Editor/MegaFiers/MegaMorphEditor.cs:975)
MegaMorphEditor:OnInspectorGUI() (at Assets/Mega-Fiers/Editor/MegaFiers/MegaMorphEditor.cs:667)
UnityEditor.DockArea:OnGUI()


Second Part-
NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
MegaMorph.BuildCompress () (at Assets/Mega-Fiers/Scripts/MegaFiers/Modifiers/Morph/MegaMorph.cs:967)
MegaMorphEditor.LoadMorph () (at Assets/Mega-Fiers/Editor/MegaFiers/MegaMorphEditor.cs:1000)
MegaMorphEditor.OnInspectorGUI () (at Assets/Mega-Fiers/Editor/MegaFiers/MegaMorphEditor.cs:667)
UnityEditor.InspectorWindow.DrawEditors (Boolean isRepaintEvent, UnityEditor.Editor[] editors, Boolean eyeDropperDirty) (at C:/BuildAgent/work/b0bcff80449a48aa/Editor/Mono/Inspector/InspectorWindow.cs:888)
UnityEditor.InspectorWindow.OnGUI () (at C:/BuildAgent/work/b0bcff80449a48aa/Editor/Mono/Inspector/InspectorWindow.cs:243)
System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)

Thanks!

 

I assume you are getting a Mapping Failure, if so check the Morph page on the website as to why this is, it is either pivots having been altered or first frame not matching pose on animated characters. http://www.west-racing.com/mf/?page_id=257
Virtually every single time I have been sent a max file saying it produces mapping failures it has been because pivots have been played with. The other times they have applied smoothing modifiers above the morph modifier in Max which just wont work.

 

Hi, SpookyCat, looks like minus limit is still on yours todo list, I wonder is that hard to remove limitation at all? Like, in 3ds max, I can set values to something like -500 to +500, and Morph just intelligently interpolates between those two. Is it possible to include in future megafiers releases too?

 

Hi There
I will be adding that in shortly, it needs a little changing of some code and will need some testing which is why I didn't put it in the last release, snowed under with trying to do new asset systems, tutorials and support at the moment so finding free time is tricky, it will be in the next release though.
Chris

 

The next video guide is up, this time the Bend Modifier
[video=youtube;okZ3-j6GIWA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okZ3-j6GIWA

 

Thank you for letting me know, that will help me to plan future workflow

 

I have an interesting problem. We are using Maya 2012 64-bit with the Mega-fiers exporter and have not had issues until now. One of our artists tries to export as a MOR file, and despite Maya indicating a successful save in the command line, we cannot find this file at the path which it was saved. A search for the file returns nothing. Neither closing Maya and restarting, nor rebooting the system solve the problem. Maya will export OBJs and other file types with no problem, however.

Has anyone else had this happen?

 

Updating latterly is generating critical errors in the Unity editor. Some errors are about duplicated scrips with the same name but I have had this last error (and it is related to MegaFiers updating process):
Script compilation error: Couldn't replace Library/ScriptAssemblies/Assembly-UnityScript-firstpass.dll

 

@WSchneller - That sounds like a very odd one, the plugin uses standard file writing systems and the path is supplied by the Maya end so not sure what could be causing that, I will look again at the code though.

@angel_m - If you get a duplicated script remove the offending script file from the MegaFier Test Scene/Script folder, rest assured I wont make the mistake of having scripts in another folder while I work on them again so this shouldn't happen again. If you remove all the duplicated files then all should be fine. If you are still having problems does the error you report above give any other help as to where the issue is?

 

Next tutorial video is done. Stretch Modifier

 

No I can't report more details abou the last error.
About the duplicated scripts, I was getting more errors if I delete the offending ones.
I had to reinstall Megafiers with a backup version.

 

How did you delete the duplicated files?

 

Testing the water modifier, displace - Input, x pos seems to be reversed (ie, the ripple happens on the opposite side of the mesh) - am I doing something wrong?

 

Good effort getting it up and running with no instructions, was going to do a tutorial on it this weekend. The current interaction code for drawing on the mesh uses the texture coords for calculating the point to write to so I suspect your water mesh has uv.x values around the other way, you could just rotate the object 180 degrees. I will add some better code.

 

Bulge Modifier guide
[video=youtube;OKb5c7cH7MI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKb5c7cH7MI

 

Wonderful visuals. As usual class all the way.!

 

Thanks Bruno, Tony loves your Hard Surface Shaders which is what was used on the Flier they just work so well.

 

HI Chris,
Any news on megashapes pro? Can't wait for it. Would happily be an early-adopter if that is an option too.
thanks
d

 

Hi Chris, I'm able to get the rubber modifiers to work fine as per the dino sample, but with animations on my own skinned mesh the movement induced on the rubbery part of the mesh don't affect the rubbery bits.

In other words, if I move my entire character during game time (or animate my character's root node), the physics behave as expected, but movements on the bones don't cause the soft bits to move...

As an additional clue, the 'show weights' don't move at all when my boned mesh animates, but moves when I perform root motion manually or through an animation)

I have tried many hours with all permutations of all the settings, have disabled multithreading, have restarted on an empty project/scene, have changed orders of modifiers, and am still grasping at straws...

Am I missing anything obvious?

D

 

wait for boolean feature~~

 

@droderick - I am back on MegaShapes in between tutorial videos so expect some news on that soon.

@dvochin - Currently the rubber modifier only uses the transform it is attached to to calculate the effect, which will be the main root. The system could be extended to use bones and requires each vertex looking up the bones it uses for position and find the total movement from that, shouldn't be hard to do and was going to do most of the code needed to extend the attach object script to work with skinned objects anyway.

@z789017890 - That will be out not long after MegaShapes is done

 

Hi Chris, thanks for the reply... was glad to see I wasn't going crazy!

However for our game performance is important and I feel performance would be affected if each vertex has to iterate through its bones to calculate position for hundreds of vertices each frame... but wouldn't the game engine already calculate that and provide access to the skinned vertices positions?

For our needs however, I just need the soft bits to be tied to one single bone, and for performance I suggest that if a per-vertex calculation is mandatory for this to work that you also give people the ability on most of your modifiers to tie the "root node" to the position orientation of single bone... that would render the existing work even more useful as artists can design their mesh and bone structure for better game-time performance while still providing access to those cool modifiers on skinned meshes.

Top-notch work on megafiers BTW... truly a revolution for gaming engines, me thinks... makes Unity leapfrog UDK in critical areas IMO.

D

 

Unfortunately Unity doesn't expose the final vertex positions of a skinned mesh so they would have to be calculated for a full bone linked system, it shouldn't be too slow depending on how many vertices and bones are involved. I will add the option to the rubber modifier to select a transform to link the effect to, that should be simple and would probably make the existing system useable in most cases as you say.

Thank you for the kind words, it is great to see people find a use for it all and to actually get some feedback from its real world use is very satisfying, would just love to see more examples of it in use

Also just to say two more tutorial videos have been added covering the Cylindrify and Noise modifiers. There is a playlist for all the new videos at http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL84A5301D86EF8CAE&feature=plcp and off course if you want to get notified directly when a new video is uploaded then subscribing to the Youtube channel is probably the best option, or follow my Twitter feed https://twitter.com/#!/Gawaine1066

 

Hi Chris, that is awesome news... am glad that rubber and other modifiers can be enhanced by tying to a selected transform instead of mandatory root node... will make them much more versatile!

No problem on the compliments... I think they are well deserved... truly 'above and beyond' type of work IMO!

I know you're super busy, but so that I plan development correctly may I obtain an ETA for rubber to have the new selectable transform?

Thanks again!

D

 

I have just added the option to pick a target for the Rubber modifier so will be in the next update, if you need it quicker then just contact me through a pm or email at the site with your email address and invoice number for the Megafiers purchase and I will get the files sent.
Chris

 

Hi Chris, that's completely awesome... you really know your stuff to do this within a couple of hours!

As I'm currently knee-deep in 3dsMax stuff for a couple weeks I'll wait to try this out at the next release when I can study to get your latest version working correctly. (For now I just needed to design my meshes bones correctly for performance)

Thanks again and keep up the fantastic work!!

D

 

I've been messing with the dynamic ripple today. Good stuff!

Anyway I was trying to get the 'Bouyancy new' script to work and I had some problems. I could not get the object to generate ripples. So I looked at the ForceAt function in MegaDynamicRipple.cs. Is it using y where it should be using z?

eg I changed a line to y = (lpos.z - bbox.min.z) / (bbox.max.z - bbox.min.z); and now I get a result.

I can't say I've had any joy with clicking mouse over the water either, not sure if its a similar issue or something on my mac or what, about to dig deeper now.

Cheers

 

Just added a video on the FFD modifiers, and while I was at it I have optimized the whole FFD system so it now runs up to 3 times faster than it used to.

@elbows - It will depend on which axis you have set for up on the modifier and how your mesh is orientated. The ripple modifier is a beta modifier so there are some rough edges which will be sorted out for the next release, others have the ripple and drawing working fine on ipad so I suspect it just a case of choosing the right axis. I will be doing a tutorial video on creating the pool scene soon.

 

Hi Chris,

Well I finally took the plunge and purchased this Unity asset with a view to using it in our game development.

We use LW for our asset production and PMG for our animation. Our intended pipline was to use Megafiers to enable the use of MDD point cache and Morph based animation in Unity.

The third party exporter for LW seams not to be working in LW 11.0.1 and even its instructions are out of date.

LW has all its morph information mapped into the original object called endomorph. I understood that the third party application would export the chosen ones as seperate meshes in the required OBJs - but fails.

Is there any way we could re-visit this solution so that it works.

On a second point, LW has a built in Morph mixing application called Morphmixer, this allows Morphs to be animated and several third party tools like lip syncing software works with the format. Morphmixer outputs exceptionally simple text based key time and morph %age files and I would love these to be able to be directly importable into the Megafiers Moph system.

You can download a free one month trial of LW 11.0.1 here

http://www.newtek.com/products/lightwave/lightwave-downloads.html

And if you need a set of sample objects with morphs, morph based animations and morph mixer files, please let me know.

3DBob

 

I have one question prior to a purchase. Will this system be able to deform only part of an object..For example using the FFD to change only the head of an animal? If it can then cool and sold. If so how simple is the setup and how do you isolate the deformation? Is it envelope or selection based?

BTH

 

You can currently limit the effect of all the modifiers by using one of the vertex select modifiers in the stack, currently there is Vertex Col or Volume select (which uses a sphere volume with falloff), the vertex color or the weight from the volume then limits the area of effect of any modifiers further down the stack. Once you have the mesh in the shape you want you can then just remove all the MegaFier components and be left with your deformed mesh which you can do whatever you like with.

I did a quick video to show the selection in use, I will add to my todo list for future updates an option to snap the lattice to the current selection.

 

Sold! Volume with falloff is the ticket. Snapping lattice to mesh..priceless.. exactly what I need.. How long before implemented? If shortly, I can forego coding this for a day or three and work on another section but snapping to lattice would be just the ticket for controlling a dogs head shape and i can eliminate a forty bone topology rig.

Off to purchase and get acquainted with your system.

Best Regards
BTH

 

Just done the code for the snap ffd to selection, so will be in the next update which should be over the weekend sometime.

 

Chris. I purchased it and have been watching the videos. Absolutely awesome and a must have in a game devs toolkit. The speed with which you add stuff and their polish is something to behold. I will dally in some artwork and await the lattice deformer update for the animal heads and body topology as a snap to lattice is exactly what I what I was seeking to code a system similar to.

I have been looking for docs for them to read offline and don't see them linked or a quick perusal through the package imports. If they aren't ready because you are tied up in code then don't let my frikkin' whining get in the way of more tools coming from you. I will figure it out quickly.

Keep rockin' that code!

Best Regards
BTH

 

As this thread is way to long to be of much use to any users of the system I have added a simple forum to the MegaFiers website, so if you have any questions, tips, suggestions or anything to show please do use it The forum link can be found on the left side bar on the website.

@Bluster T Hogwarth - There is no offline docs at the moment all the info is on the website, you can also access each page of the help from Unity directly if you right click the component inspector bar and select Help it will take it to the page for that part of the system.

 

I have just submitted version 1.88 to the Asset store. This version sees major improvements to the FFD modifiers with up to 4 times speed increase as well as easier to use editing of the lattice points with position handles, size of handles and mirroring of the inputs. The FFD lattice will now fit around the current selection if there is one but if that is not desired you can select in the context menu to fit the lattice to the entire mesh.

The Copy Object system has been improved and you can now copy an object and all its children if you like via the GameObject menu options of Mega Copy Object or Mega Copy Hier, this makes creating copies of deformed objects a lot easier.

Other changes include morphs can now have channel values outside of 0 to 100 range, and rubber modifier allows for a another object to drive the effect. I have also added the beta of the Morph Link system which allows you to link morph channel percents to bone or object transforms, this makes things like muscle bulges very easy to do, you just add the component to an object and choose whether you want the morph driven from the rotation, position or scale and from which axis and choose the morph and channel to drive and that's it, so if your animated character bends his elbow you can automatically have a bicep morph change, or setup a complete rig of controls to drive avatar systems etc. This is a work in progress so any ideas or suggestions please do share.

Changes in v1.88:

• Added an axis param to the Cylindrify modifier

• CopyObject now copies MegaModifyObject params as well

• FFD now has option for position handles instead of free handles for easier editing

• FFD has a size option for handles

• FFD has mirror x/y/z option to allow easier adjusting of lattice

• Rubber modifier now has an option to pick a target transform to control the effect

• Added color option to FFD Gizmo

• Added undo for FFD lattice point move

• Greatly improved performance of FFD modifiers

• FFD will fit lattice to selection is present

• Context menu item for fitting FFD to selection

• Context menu item for fitting FFD to mesh

• World Path Deform optimized

• Copy Object no longer adds MegaModifyObject if not needed

• Added Copy Object Hier to copy an object and all its children

• Morph now supports values outside of 0 to 100 percent and respects Min and Max values

• Beta of Morph Link system which allows morphs to be easily driven by other object positions or rotations so easy to drive a bicep muscle bulge from arm bone rotation for example

 

Another great update, FFD is so much better now, and the morph link is a great addition.

 

Thanks. I'm not really sure its an axis problem with my setup since the 'drops per sec' ripples worked ok, and a few lines before the code change I mentioned you have lpos.z = y which really makes me think the later line should be using lpos.z and bounding box z values rather than lpos.y

 

I got the mouse clicking to work now, it was a stupid error on my part, I forgot to attach a collider to the water mesh. However I did need to edit the code so that textureCoord.y was inverted to work out which row to affect, in the same way you have already done for column in your checkInput function.

Ahh what a beautiful modifier this is, think its time for me to start building a virtual 3D musical instrument that uses a range of MegaFiers controlled by incoming Midi. Hopefully this one will actually result in a finished demo rather than my usual half-baked experiments that never see the light of day!

 

When creating a script thats based on BouyancyNew.cs I discovered that waterLevel is assuming that the water mesh gameObject has a y position of 0. I added the line waterLevel += water.transform.position.y; to get around this.

I'll use your forum for this sort of thing next time, so as not to clog up this thread with my observations about beta code.

 

Just done a quick update to v1.89, a couple of things weren't quite right.

Changes in v1.89:

• Fixed a very rare point cache exception on some HW.

• Point cache animator play on start fixed

• Point cache animator works again, was broken in previous update

• Added a 2D Wave mesh object, done via a forum request.

 

2D Wave mesh quick video.

 

Wave Mesh update

 

Submitted a mini update to the asset store, this adds the collider support for the wave mesh as seen in the video above and also fixes an issue when using the Mega Copy Object methods on an object with a morph applied, the C# serialization code I developed was working but for the morph channels it was creating instances of the data so changing the percent value would effect all objects, this has been fixed so you can create multiple copies of a morphing object and control them independently. If anyone finds any more issues with the copy object system please do post on the website forum.
Chris

 

The exporters have been converted for Max 2013 32 and 64 bit, if anyone would like to test them out please email me with your invoice number and the version you need.