Snap To Surface in a Pose Window?

[robcat2075]

I can't get Snap to Surface to work in a Pose window? Does it?

 

The cursor occasionally displays the Snap to Surface icon but I'm not getting any snap.

[Rodney]

I'd never tried a Pose with Snap to Surface before (thanks for the suggestion!).

Good news and bad news here...

 

The bad news:

The S2S doesn't appear to work outside of the initial percentage (i.e. I was able to get it to S2S on 0% but then couldn't get it to work on any other percentage). After messing around it then wouldn't even work on 0%)

 

The good news:

S2S does work for me in an On/Off Pose so I'm getting two states of S2S in an On/Off Pose.

That could be very handy for animating things sliding across surfaces.

 

Update: I may have spoken a little too soon on the On/Off Pose. Sometimes I get proper S2S and sometimes I don't.

[robcat2075]

A little bit more success here...

 

Apparently the CP you are moving needs to be in front of the surface you are snapping to?

 

However, only about 1 out of 3 CPs successfully snaps on the first try.

[Rodney]

Apparently the CP you are moving needs to be in front of the surface you are snapping to?

 

Yes, there has to be a surface to snap to or A:M moves the CP to where it defaults to in 3D space.

There are also issues with several surfaces on top of each other (I believe A:M will tend to S2S the CP to the back surface... but this may be related to what you are talking about with regard to the CP being in front of the surface) It doesn't take much for the tool to infer that you want some other surface. For this reason I've taken to hiding parts of a model that aren't needed prior to using Snap to Surface. I then lock down the part of the mesh that the CPs will snap to so the only thing 'active' is the working mesh.

[Rodney]

After resetting A:M I got S2S to work with a percentage pose (0, 50 and 100 percent)

Disclaimer: At this point its just a simple three CP spline moving across/around a cylinder

[robcat2075]

I'm finding that if I try to adjust the position of a point that has been snapped it jumps to some place far off the surface and can't be snapped back again.

[detbear]

UNFORTUNATELY, the snap to surface does not work inside a pose window. Well...maybe some, but it is

flawed for some reason.

 

I found that out a while ago.

 

I've built 5 facial morphs so far. By hand. It Looks massively impressive because of the detail in the mesh. My retopo version

with reduced splines just isn't the same. Plus...with my morph targets already done from the other place....it moves things very well

once the cp's are lined up.

[NancyGormezano]

I'm finding that if I try to adjust the position of a point that has been snapped it jumps to some place far off the surface and can't be snapped back again.

 

I was not very successful with snap to surface (but I tried awhile back) - but:

1) I suspect the model that I was trying to snap to did not have a dense enough mesh, and

2) I believe I was a little bit more successful (it's been awhile) when I tried to snap patches (4 cps) rather than just one cp. And

3) perhaps it worked better in the chor (rather than modeling window, or pose?) - with the model being snapped to was imported as a prop, maybe?

 

As I said - I can't remember, as I became impatient, and really didn't have a use for this, other than trying it out. At some point I thought I might want to model a rough 3D rotoscope model first in A:M (made of spheres, primitives), and then use that to guide my modeling for a more detailed model. I didn't/don't have any high density polygon models that I wanted to bring into A:M from any other program, as it seems that's what this feature is more suited.

 

s2s did seem very touchy to me.

[detbear]

Nancy is correct.

 

Snap to Surface works much better in a Choreography.

 

AND it works much better when you are working on top of an .obj prop.

 

However, in this case, the mesh is so dense, you'd quickly lose track of the splines.

 

A snap to cp feature the works similar to the "Snap to Grid" would be ideal.

[robcat2075]

Then i think we should report some Snap to surface issues. It ought to work fine in modeling mode in a Pose window.

 

I find it works much of the time but not 100%

[detbear]

O.K.

 

Attached is a sample animation of 5 morphs that I've sweated out matching cps.

Also the attached pics show the density of the base mesh. fun, fun, fun.

 

 

WybooProductions_5_Morphs.mov

 

 

William

[robcat2075]

When snap to surface works I can match the CPs pretty quickly. A Snap-to-CP tool would be ideal in this situation.

[detbear]

Yes...... That's been my point from the start. Since there was no way to Snap cp's to cp's,

I was inquiring if a bone could be snapped to a cp. Even that would be much more difficult than

having a "snap to cp" feature though.

 

This would allow for some new horizons.

[robcat2075]

So you really don't need to snap a bone to a CP.

 

I never understood what that was going to get.

[detbear]

No. Not if the cp's themselves could be relocated easily.

 

However, I did discover in this process a really neat use for assigning a bone to a single

cp group. Via the "group constraint"..

 

 

If the same snap to cp process could be done in a smartskin...then you could also transfer joint morphs

[zandoriastudios]

If the bones are driving facial animation, why won't weighting their influence suffice? A bone doesn't have to be snapped to the same position as a CP to move it. A limited number of bones could account for ALL of the CPs in the face (you might even auto weight them).

[detbear]

Will...

 

You are correct about utilizing that. And A:M weights/ smartskins are very good. But that's not what I'm trying to get.

 

 

What we are trying to accomplish more efficiently is importing models and their morph targets exactly from other apps that already have the weighting worked out.

In this case models of the morphs themselves have to be matched. We're not trying to re-weight cp's to bones again inside of Hash, but rather inject the morphs already built externally.

 

Cheers,

 

William D.

[zandoriastudios]

Oh! Well, good luck with that!

[detbear]

:) :)

[yoda64]

I'm finding that if I try to adjust the position of a point that has been snapped it jumps to some place far off the surface and can't be snapped back again.

 

Testcase please , can't see this behavior

[robcat2075]

I'll put together a sample project for you, Steffen.

[detbear]

So is there any chance that a snap to cp might be possible in correlation to the S2S tool?

[robcat2075]

So is there any chance that a snap to cp might be possible in correlation to the S2S tool?

 

Yes. It's in the secret laboratory stage right now.

 

I've tried a version of it and sent Steffen some feedback towards making it more practical to work with.

 

Stay tuned!

[detbear]

That Sounds amazing.

 

Thank you for putting time in this RC.

 

And please tell Steffen that I for one am very greatful for his work on that. I know

how much he's probably having to do already.

 

My deepest thank you(s)

 

William

[detbear]

What's the latest on this potential feature. Is it working out?

 

I hope so. If so, will it operate like the snap to surface?

 

Wonder if there would be a way to automate the process where within a certain distance,

all the cp's of one model would snap to the cp's of another model. That way, if yopu had the cp's

close, they would automatically cling to the nearest one. Would be cool. Dreaming a bit here

 

Cheers,

 

William

[robcat2075]

What's the latest on this potential feature. Is it working out?

 

I sat down to make a quick demo of it and found that Snap to Surface wasn't working right, so I've sent a note back to Steffen on that for him to look at.

 

 

Wonder if there would be a way to automate the process where within a certain distance,

all the cp's of one model would snap to the cp's of another model. That way, if yopu had the cp's

close, they would automatically cling to the nearest one.

 

I see it sort of working like this: First you use Snap to Surface to get your CPs close to the intended targets and then you select them and Choose Snap to CP to bump them all in place exactly.