Skin is back
Posted: 17 Jul 2016, 23:56
Hello
thing on Vimeo is let's say workable result of learning Maya in last few months. After a number of trials of any alternative to skin in Maya (LT), like lattices, DQ skin, blend shapes and so, finally ended with just an ordinary linearly blended skin, plus of course a lot of deformers to drive the thing, around 150 for now. I think I deserve a small medal for making the skin in Maya LT , as it doesn't allow plugins like ng Skin Tools, has no even a component editor, built in paint skin was everything I had. Anyway, reached this state much faster than I expected.
Thing follows same concept as before, that is, once there is enough strong feature, just 'ride' only on that and nothing else. Here this is Maya Node Editor for everything, heavily (ab)used to replace out-of-the-box constraints (too much connections and options). Even IK chains and sort of 'half Soft IK" are created 'manually', by math nodes. Almost complete thing is let's say parametric, proportions are animatable, so, relative easy to fit to another model. There is no one driven key, on 'nothing else' side. Skin cluster is only one deformation operator.
Beside parts of Node Editor making me mad, and Maya at all - this app has a unseen talent to make a damage whenever it tries to help - performance of all that crap is amazing. For around 700 transform nodes, 150 deformers, around 2.5 K nodes at all, subdivided model, it's still running at 90 FPS, on home toy machine, 4 core I5 and GeForce 750 Gtx TI.
Generally I'm planning to share some details of this wonderful and horrible experience in next weeks. My choice are custom node setups, anyway if there is another idea, considering great interest and love for Maya here on forum, I'm listening.
thing on Vimeo is let's say workable result of learning Maya in last few months. After a number of trials of any alternative to skin in Maya (LT), like lattices, DQ skin, blend shapes and so, finally ended with just an ordinary linearly blended skin, plus of course a lot of deformers to drive the thing, around 150 for now. I think I deserve a small medal for making the skin in Maya LT , as it doesn't allow plugins like ng Skin Tools, has no even a component editor, built in paint skin was everything I had. Anyway, reached this state much faster than I expected.
Thing follows same concept as before, that is, once there is enough strong feature, just 'ride' only on that and nothing else. Here this is Maya Node Editor for everything, heavily (ab)used to replace out-of-the-box constraints (too much connections and options). Even IK chains and sort of 'half Soft IK" are created 'manually', by math nodes. Almost complete thing is let's say parametric, proportions are animatable, so, relative easy to fit to another model. There is no one driven key, on 'nothing else' side. Skin cluster is only one deformation operator.
Beside parts of Node Editor making me mad, and Maya at all - this app has a unseen talent to make a damage whenever it tries to help - performance of all that crap is amazing. For around 700 transform nodes, 150 deformers, around 2.5 K nodes at all, subdivided model, it's still running at 90 FPS, on home toy machine, 4 core I5 and GeForce 750 Gtx TI.
Generally I'm planning to share some details of this wonderful and horrible experience in next weeks. My choice are custom node setups, anyway if there is another idea, considering great interest and love for Maya here on forum, I'm listening.