** Poses and Magnets (Part 5).****The FalloffCurve**

Now we are going to "boldly go where no one was gone before" (or very few at least), deep into the Zone, to the very heart of the Sphere, where we will plunge down curves that fall off at a vertiginous angles. This is not for the faint hearted, we may have to send many brave sword wielding Victoria to her death, in the persuit of the advancement of mad science!

The FalloffCurve lives in the 'sphereZoneProp' (Mag Zone), it determines the strength of the effect that the Mag has at different parts of the Zone. The FalloffCurve is a spline curve. In the Poser interface, the FalloffCurve can be edited in the 'Falloff Graph' which is accessed via the Zone's Properties. In the Falloff Graph, the left hand node (or "Control Point") represents the falloff at the center of the Mag Zone, and the right hand node represents the falloff at the outside edge of the Zone, other nodes represent various points between these two extremes. See image above, Fig 1. All images are of the ClothPlain, with translations of the Base and Zone set at zero, and some yTran applied to the Mag. Note that you will get different results if the center of the Zone in not level with the surface to be deformed.

In the 'sphereZoneProp' (Mag Zone), the FalloffCurve is defined by 'falloffCpt' lines like these:

        buildSphere
        newFalloffCurve
        falloffCpt 0 1
        falloffCpt 0.0945946 0.780653
        falloffCpt 0.175676 0.751078
        falloffCpt 0.335135 0.443118
        falloffCpt 0.478378 0.345122
        falloffCpt 1 0
        endFalloffCurve

This defines the same curve as in Fig 1. Each node is defined by two values, I think the first value represents the distance of the node from the edge of the Zone as a percentage of that distance, with "0" being the center of the Zone, and "1" being equal to "100%", the outside edge. The second value represents the strength of the Mag's affect at that point. This value can vary from "0" no effect, to "1" full effect. Let's take a simple case with just two nodes, we can put it in a pose file (see Fig 2):

{
//FallOff-Straight.pz2
//For Mag Zone 1.
version
        {
        number 4.01
        }

sphereZoneProp Mag Zone 1
        {
        buildSphere
        newFalloffCurve
        falloffCpt 0 1
        falloffCpt 1 0
        endFalloffCurve
        }
}

This represents a full effect of the Mag at the center of the Zone, and no effect at the outside edge (see Fig 2). Because there are only two nodes, the falloff "curve" going from 0 to 1, can only be a straight line. This can be a good starting point for making your own FalloffCurve in the Poser Falloff Graph Editor. you can apply this pose to 'Mag Zone 1' then open the Falloff Graph Editor, and add more nodes to make a more complex curve. The default curve has 4 nodes, and is a less flexible starting point because there is no way to delete nodes in the Graph Editor. But you do this at your own risk, this is experimental stuff, bending the curve in the wrong way might rupture the fabric of space-time or something, and God only knows what would happen then! Now let's look at the opposite set-up (Fig 3):

{
//FallOff-Straight-Inverse.pz2
//For Mag Zone 1.
version
        {
        number 4.01
        }

sphereZoneProp Mag Zone 1
        {
        buildSphere
        newFalloffCurve
        falloffCpt 0 0
        falloffCpt 1 1
        endFalloffCurve
        }
}

Position zero, the center of the Zone, has an strength of zero, whilst position 1 (100%), the edge of the zone has an strength of one, full strength (see Fig 3). To get the full strength of the magnet over the whole Zone, no falloff at all, we could use this (fig 4):

{
//FallOff-Zero.pz2
//For Mag Zone 1.
version
        {
        number 4.01
        }

sphereZoneProp Mag Zone 1
        {
        buildSphere
        newFalloffCurve
        falloffCpt 0 1
        falloffCpt 1 1
        endFalloffCurve
        }
}

With 3 nodes we can start to get a curve, even when the center of the Zone is on the surface (Fig 5): { //FallOff-Concave.pz2 //For Mag Zone 1. version { number 4.01 }

sphereZoneProp Mag Zone 1
        {
        buildSphere
        newFalloffCurve
        falloffCpt 0 1
        falloffCpt 0.5 0.246633
        falloffCpt 1 0
        endFalloffCurve
        }
}

Here is a dome (Fig 6): { //FallOff-Dome.pz2 //For Mag Zone 1. version { number 4.01 }

sphereZoneProp Mag Zone 1
        {
        buildSphere
        newFalloffCurve
        falloffCpt 0 1
        falloffCpt 0.5 0.75
        falloffCpt 1 0
        endFalloffCurve
        }
}

Here is a more complex curve, a "fountain": { //FallOff-Fountain.pz2 //For Mag Zone 1. version { number 4.01 }

sphereZoneProp Mag Zone 1
        {
        buildSphere
        newFalloffCurve
        falloffCpt 0 1
        falloffCpt 0.256757 0.144004
        falloffCpt 0.47027 0.320245
        falloffCpt 0.5 0.221285
        falloffCpt 0.686486 0.20976
        falloffCpt 0.848649 0.219915
        falloffCpt 0.905405 0.118923
        falloffCpt 0.92973 0.00596022
        falloffCpt 0.959459 0.00139323
        falloffCpt 1 0
        endFalloffCurve
        }
}

This is all I can think of to say about poses and magnets, at the moment, except to say I am working on a new pose based version of MirrorMags that will support a lot of magnets. I hope to release it soon.