- Squash And Stretch?

[wrend]

have you played around w the handle? positioning, plus upper and lower bounds? still not getting your expected result?

[mark_wilkins]

Well, you could always use a lattice deformer attached to the ball whose vertices are driven by driven keys to give you a precise bounce cycle that deforms the sphere however you'd like, but that's a more complicated setup than most people use for a bouncing ball. :)

Another approach is to put a fixed lattice near the ground, so that the ball flattens out when it strikes. This also handles the flattening better if the ball's tumbling end-over-end as it strikes. The downside to this is that the ball's transition to flattened will look just like its transition out of the flattened state, which may not look the way you want it to.

I know some studios have developed constant-volume deformers as plug-ins, and that's probably the more general way to handle this problem.

-- Mark

[CIM]

Um, a lattice doesn't work. Squash means to flatten while maintaining volume. Why the hell doesn't the Squash deformer let you squash from a different area instead of just the center?

[mark_wilkins]

You CAN maintain volume by hand-keying driven keys driving a lattice, and I pointed out that just using a fixed lattice had problems.

Anyway, I'd have hoped that it would be clear from my mention of constant-volume deformers that you'd realize that I understood what you were looking for. However, there's not an easy answer to the problem.

-- Mark

[wrend]

what part of my post didnt you get?

maya's squish deformer isnt doing true volume presevatn, sure, its just your usual scaling relations, standard in the deformer suite of every other app.

what are you finding so different from other implementations?

Why the hell doesn't the Squash deformer let you squash from a different area instead of just the center?

...what i said before...shift the deformer such that its origin is at the object's foot, does this not do what you expect?

if you want a setup something w a little more respect for the volume, w/o going api, play w softs, springs, wraps. or like mark suggests, lattices perhaps ...little more explicit.

[tropistic]

listen to wren CIM, you CAN squash from WHEREever you want. just dig into the docs a bit deeper guy...specifically (sigh):

Using Maya->CharacterSetup->Deformers->UsingSquash->Examples

Jay

[BishopLynx]

you can try this just for kicks

ball.scaleX = sqrt (1/ball.scaleY);
ball.scaleZ = sqrt (1/ball.scaleY);

Obviously replace "ball" with whatever your object is named but this little expression has come in handy for simple squash and stretch stuff.

[The Cross]

If i were to try to resolve this. i would just snap the pivot at the bottom of the sphere and just use the scale tool.

Then on the other hand..It might mess up the animation.

Another theory would be to parent the sphere to something that wouldn't show up in a render, like a nurbs curve, and animate the curve with the sphere parented to it, allowing you to scale the sphere from any pivot point you choose.


I never really tried any of what i said in depth...It's just a suggestion from the top of my head and there is a chance i could be wrong.

[The Cross]

And if your going to try to resolve it my way....I recommend you have that Linear Curve sticking out of the top of the sphere like a handle for an easier animation process.


As for the pivot ...select the sphere and press the insert key on your keyboard to snap the pivot to where you want it to be. And where it's in place...press insert again......(Just incase you never knew that.)

[MasonDoran]

select the squash node in the channel box....hit "t" to show the manipulator to adjust all of its settings for how you want to squash it(play with all of the settings in the channel box so you get familiar with working with history and nodes)....and just use the move tool to move it whereve you want....its independant of the object...so if you want it to follow the object...just parent it

[Rudity]

Originally posted by 2byts
select the squash node in the channel box....hit "t" to show the manipulator to adjust all of its settings for how you want to squash it(play with all of the settings in the channel box so you get familiar with working with history and nodes)....and just use the move tool to move it whereve you want....its independant of the object...so if you want it to follow the object...just parent it

This is what I use.
I also orient constain the squash deformer to a locator somewhere in the scene.
So's I can rotate the ball and have the squash still verticle, and of course if it needs to be horizontal when the ball is moving fast, just animate the locator. :)

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