Bake material deformations into object

[Adam Trachtenberg]

You can use the MoGraph displacement deformer and make that editable, but you have to add the geometry with a HN object rather than subpoly. So, for example, if you have subpoly at level five, you would set the HN render subdivision to 5. And yeah, you will have a lot of polygons to deal with!

Once you make it editable disable your material’s displacement channel as it’s already baked in.

[Alan Lacey]

Thanks a lot Adam. I’ll give it a go.

Are there any implications using HN objcet rather than subpolys?

I only needed subpoly level at two so I hope I don’t end up with an impossibly large number of vertices.

Once I get to using the magnet tool on all these vertices, is there any way or turning off the individual vertex display as these mask the object.

Cheers

Alan

FlashXDR,XDcamHD,XDcamEX,D9 etc
FCS,AE,Combustion,LiquidSilver,Vegas,Edius,
G5,MBP,Vista64,XP

[Adam Trachtenberg]

The main thing with using HN instead of subpoly is that it uses more ram. Obviously it can slow down the viewport, too.

Regarding the magnet tool, you don’t actually have to be in point mode to use it.

[Alan Lacey]

Thanks for your patience Adam. If only I could get this working it would be ideal, but no cigar yet!

It’s for a teaching medical piece about laser eye surgery for glaucoma. I need animatable iris fibre, high detail. I’ve got just the look I need using the combination of a nice iris bitmap, used for bump and displacement mapping.

I now need to do a small PLA on the iris surface via the magnet tool.

What I did:

Iris material displacemant mapping (type:Intensity, subpolys on, level:3)
Place the iris under a Mograph displacement deformer (emulation mode)
Turn off material bump map (to simplify view)
All looks good
Put under HN tag (subdiv=3 both editor and renderer)
Make editable
still looks good
Turn off mat. displacement map
All gone!

I hope I’ve misunderstood you and are missing a step?

Cheers

Alan

FlashXDR,XDcamHD,XDcamEX,D9 etc
FCS,AE,Combustion,LiquidSilver,Vegas,Edius,
G5,MBP,Vista64,XP

[Alan Lacey]

Hmmm more and more complicated.

The above method does indeed produce many more vertices (via the HN) but these are all coplanar with the original geometry. You need to keep the material displacement mapping switched on to access these vertices for animation.

So it’s not a true geometry baking process, but the good news is that these vertices are still capable of PLA.

Thanks Adam

Alan

FlashXDR,XDcamHD,XDcamEX,D9 etc
FCS,AE,Combustion,LiquidSilver,Vegas,Edius,
G5,MBP,Vista64,XP

[Adam Trachtenberg]

Oops, my bad. You have to use “current state to object” on the HN rather than “make editable”. Also make sure that the HN is being applied *after* the displace deformer. So it should go:

HN
>polygon object
>displace deformer

NOT:

HN
>polygon object
>>displace deformer

[Alan Lacey]

Arrrr thanks Adam I’ll try again. Although I’ve got something pretty acceptable now using an FFD.

All those polys certainly slowed the machine up somewhat.

Alan

FlashXDR,XDcamHD,XDcamEX,D9 etc
FCS,AE,Combustion,LiquidSilver,Vegas,Edius,
G5,MBP,Vista64,XP