like the rivet script, but for max?

[craiggulow]

Take look at the attachment controller. It should do what you're after.

[metamesh]

it is not really the same thing.
I know that you can constraint the position of an object on the surface of another one, but then if you wanna use that same object to deform/be skinned or whatever to the first object you either get into a dependency loop or end up having a double transform in what you are doing, so it´s not really the same as rivet...

[labbejason]

I'm not familiar with the rivet script. What does it do, Alex? I'm assuming you just click somewhere on a mesh then a rivet attaches onto it?

If that's what it does, I remember using a tool that could mimic that. I think it's called Pluck!, by Paul Hormis. There's another tool like that, I think it's called magnetic, or something along the lines of that. Anyways, it's main purpose was to paint feathers onto a mesh, but you could always change the geometry to whatever you'd like.

You could use attachment constraints, but it can be very time consuming if you are attaching a lot of objects onto the mesh. Alternatively, by pressing alt+N, you can use the normal align function. With this, you can click on the face of the object you want to attach with, then the face to the object you want to attach on. This will align these faces. Again, time consuming, and probably not very accurate.

[labbejason]

Double post!

[metamesh]

mmmallright, i will try to explain myself since english sometimes gets a bit messy for me! :)
I want to
1.attatch an object (A) to the surface of another one(B) in the same way that attach controller does.
2.i want to add A as a bone to B (i guess is the more similar thing to a cluster in maya...)
the problem of doing so, is that either you get double transform or u get a dependency loop.

the main purpose of doing this, at least in my case, is cos i wanna have a fully rigged head with morphs, but i wanna be able to have some clusters on the face no top of the morphs to be able to tweak some poses and not being always limited to the morphs...so everytime i trigger a morph, i want the attached object (A) inherit the movement of the vertex that is attatched to, but at the same time not affecting the mesh with this transformation that is just inherit from the morph...does that make any sense? if you have the chance to watch the hyper realistic facial setup dvd from Alias for maya you will understand better what i mean...

I hope that makes sense and thanx for any help!

[craiggulow]

it is not really the same thing.
I know that you can constraint the position of an object on the surface of another one, but then if you wanna use that same object to deform/be skinned or whatever to the first object you either get into a dependency loop or end up having a double transform in what you are doing, so it´s not really the same as rivet...

It is what you're looking for in max, it just requires a somewhat different workflow than what you'd do in Maya. I'm assuming anyway, that what you're looking to do is similar to what Victor Vynals (sorry if I got his name wrong) did in his demo reel. Dwayne Elahie has put together a video demonstration of the technique. You'll find it on his tutorial page:

http://www.cilsya.com

A bit of warning, I had to use IE to visit his site as Firefox always crashed. That's probably due to the extensions I'm running and not Mr. Elahie's web code.

Cheers,

[craiggulow]

Duplicate post.

[IkerCLoN]

Hey, mister A! How do you do? I'm working on a solution for this. Although it's taking quite time, I'm getting some nice workflow here (well, I guess...). I was working on one approach to the problem, and I developed a little tool for it. But then I came up with another one, that may be faster for the user to set up. You know, always trying to improve.

I'm still an amateur scripter, so the code may look dirty for you experienced guys... but as long as it works, I'm quite happy with it :-) I'll try to make it cleaner and "opened" so you guys can use it with your own scenes... hope does not take a lot of time...

And thanks for the posts. Very interesting information :-)

p.s.:By the way, Alex, you've got a mail from me in your Hotmail account. Do you allow me to make a little video and upload it here (showing your model, not the facial GUI) so you can track and give some fedback on what I'm doing?

[archanex]

I second the cilsya video. We are actually using this technique for our senior project at digipen. It takes a bit of time to set up, but it works pretty well

basically you turn up the morph, and then that controller goes with it, and you can move the controller on top of the morph without getting double transformations

There are a couple of strings attatched, the main one being that because the controller is attatched to a vertex number on said mesh, as soon as you smooth the mesh, the vertex numbers go out the window, and the controllers move to ridiculous spots

If you're interested I may be able to put together a video of it all working, but cilsya.com has a demonstration online now =)

[metamesh]

It is what you're looking for in max, it just requires a somewhat different workflow than what you'd do in Maya. I'm assuming anyway, that what you're looking to do is similar to what Victor Vynals (sorry if I got his name wrong) did in his demo reel. Dwayne Elahie has put together a video demonstration of the technique. You'll find it on his tutorial page:

http://www.cilsya.com (http://www.cilsya.com/)


thanks man, that seems exactly what i was looking for but i just watch the video very quickly, i will have another look now! again, thx!

Do you allow me to make a little video and upload it here (showing your model, not the facial GUI) so you can track and give some fedback on what I'm doing?Today 10:33 PM

sure man! go for it and show us the stuff!! :) take care matey

[craiggulow]

No worries. I was going to use this set-up for a character I just built, rigged and animated, but I personally prefer the controls to be off the face.

[eek]

The tuts ok, but first off I'd add a new point onto of the attached point as a child and then parent the control to this. Else your coordynite system will be screwd. Or un-check align to surface and parent it to a master control the head is under.

Also you could get the transform space and convert it.

Another thing you can do to speed up is not to use a script controller is instance the position controlller of each control under a position_list.

Also i dont know if the wire param bug is fixed - so make sure your time range is -1000 to 1000 to make sure it work (if its been fixed disregard this)

[IkerCLoN]

Here I bring what I'm working on now. As I said, I think it's not the best approach, but I'm working on improving the general workflow as well as the underlying stuff:

http://www.somosposmodernos.com/reel/StickyPoints__01_.html

If you want to download the video, go here (http://www.somosposmodernos.com/reel/StickyPoints__01__media/StickyPoints__01_.wmv). Kudos to Álex Huguet a.k.a 'metamesh' for the model and all the stuff. Great work, dude!

[archanex]

That looks pretty hot IkerClon, but unfortunantly it's difficult to tell what the script is actually doing from the video. Surly you had to do all of the skinning by hand yes?

[IkerCLoN]

Yeah, because of the 'hurry' on making the video maybe it's not beeing understood. OK, so what the utility does is:

a) takes the vertex from the mesh, and creates an object (sphere at that point, with an empty Morpher modifier).

b) creates a sphere in every morph target at the same vertex, and loads their positions into the empty Morpher modifier of a) (this is when the message pops up in the video).

c) the 'Index', 'Part' and 'Side' are used for the naming. Although the 'Rig Points' button just wires some stuff (target morphs of the sphere to the facial GUI), I want to connect things by naming. I'm working on this right now...

Yeah, bad news are you have to do the Skin by hand, but I spent almost two years skinning characters and props, so I don't mind doing it once again :) Maybe we can guess a way to make a first approach to the skin automatically, via envelopes size or something...

Thanks for watching, dude!

[marktsang]

hey ,
not sure if this is what you mean but try this ---

www.marktsang.com/alex.zip

very simple setup - list pos controller - with attachement to low mesh copy of model with morpher - then a pos xyz with zero weight (so no double transforms) drives the morphs

interesting stuff iker....i had another idea about blending between point positions using constraints and blending with morpher but i think simpler is better

mark

[refract]

http://www.footools.com/3dsmax_plugins.html

Bindpoints is what its called...

Here is the description for rivet.. since this thread is going off in different directions..
Rivet (button) (rivet.zip (http://www.geocities.com/bazhutkin/rivet.zip)) 4.0 Kb

It constraints locator to Polygon or NURBS surfaces. Select two edges on polygon surface or one point on NURBS surface and click `rivet` icon.

Script creates locator. After that you can parent or constrain any object to it. Or constrain objects to locator from other hierarchy.
Note: Script doesn't create expressions. Calculation is fast and interactive!

... and here is the link on Highend3d for it http://highend3d.com/maya/downloads/mel_scripts/animation/976.html

[refract]

Ok.. i've been playing with the sample max scene file, to no avail. I create a plane, and a dummy,.. add bind to face modifier to the plane, but cannot figure out how to get the dummy object bound to points on the plane.
Under the 'bind to face" modifier, there is a "Nodes" field. How to get objects in it?.. I tried the readme, and ran several maxscript setups with it including my plane objects name.. still nothing..

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