Question: adding fields to fur

[beaker]

When you create attractors for the fur there is an option to make them dynamic.

[mattwood]

Watch out though, dynamic attractors don't work in v4.5 so you can't do any kind of dynamics with fur. There may be a patch on A|W's website or you may have to contact support to get it.

[dilithium]

Matt Wood: -
<SNIP> dynamic attractors don't work in v4.5 so you can't do any kind of dynamics with fur. <SNIP>

Hi people. Sorry to bring this to the front again. I've been playing a little with dynamic attractors over the past couple of days.

How much of the above statement is true?

I'm not knocking you Matt, it's just that I have fields working with 4.5; gravity, wind etc. Keying the rotation of the fur-attached object is fine. The fur lags behind and bends as it should. However, I cannot get it to lag behind if I key the translation of the object without SERIOUSLY ramping up the sensitivity on the attractors.

If you're still listening, Matt, is this the problem you meant? Can anyone else shed some light on this?

Thanks. :beer:

[mattwood]

If you created your attractors in 4.0 or below then I think they'll work okay in 4.5.

I tried absolutely everything to get my dynamic chains to react to the movement (translation and rotation) of the surface without any luck, whereas in v4.0 it worked instantly. I didn't try any fields though so you're probably right about that.

A|W support confirmed it was a bug and sent me instructions how to patch Maya. They were also posted on the mailing lists but I can pass them on if anyone needs them.

[dilithium]

Created straight in 4.5. Actually, I never tried to key the IK handles directly. I just assumed you couldn't do that because they were dynamic.

Don't think I'll be getting anything like Sully for a while :rolleyes:

The patch thing would be nice if it's not too much of a hastle.

Cheers, mate

Anyone else? Come on now. Don't be shy :)

And to answer slayerment's question... Go into component mode and select particles only. Then go to fields and select the desired field (gravity, for example). It'll attach itself to the particles. If it's part of a body I ended up making the body geometry a collision object to stop the chain-links passing through.

[mattwood]

OK, this is what I was told. I came with lots of disclaimers to the effect that it's not fully tested and you must make backups beforehand etc. I never actually tried it myself because it was too late for the project I was on.

Delete the following lines from
AliasWavefront\Maya4.5\scripts\fur\FurPluginCreateUI.mel

if ($pointInfoNode != "") {
connectAttr ($pointInfoNode+".position") ($softBodyCurve+".translate");
}
if ($angleNode != "") {
connectAttr ($angleNode+".euler") ($softBodyCurve+".rotate");
}

[dilithium]

Excellent, Matt. It works a treat. Now, I'll have to start tweaking all those settings :(


Cheers, once again, mate
:beer:

Ooh. Also, I lied about the selecting particles thingy. Just select the soft-body curves. Doh!

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