Lesson 4: Surgically Planting those Zones

I have gone back to this image because the most difficult part of this was getting the zones the correct size and in the correct location.

Note how small the zones are, they are that way so they will not effect the teeth beside the teeth I wanted to add points to. Making the teeth point is easy, all you have to do is adjust your magent down on the y-trans. Then I went about scaling down the mag Zone very small, the zones are less than 1.0. You can just see the zones if you look closey at the two pointed teeth. It was a matter then of moving the zone around and readjusting the x scale, the y scale and the z scale individually so the zone took on just the right shape to effect that single tooth. I then adjusted the magent for a better setting where the point was exactly the ritght length. I went back and forth tweaking both the zone and mag a few more times until the tooth pointing was just right.

Note that I didn't choose the k9 teeth for this example, this is because they are behind the cheek and difficult to get to on this model. With more work, I may have been able to get the zone in the right place inside the mouth.

Sometimes using magnet zones are not surgical enough, these occurances may require a tempory regrouping of the .obj while you make the changes. Remember, magnet only works on the groups you tell it to.

Message edited on: 07/05/2005 15:10

Message edited on: 07/05/2005 15:12

Take note that most of the time, the magnets location and size and what not isn't important at all, but some times it is. It is important when rescaling a geometry because the size will changes will be relative to the base's location. In my conversion kits, I have bases right in the middle of limbs for instance because the rescaling and bending is taking place from the center of those bases.

The first thing I did was selected the base and scaled it all down to a workable size. note: when you shrink your base you also shrink the magnet's size along with it and the magnet's power along with it. You will be using using higher parameter settings on the magent than in its formal larger state. This hardly needs mentioning, but you should be happy with the magent and base size right now before you begin adjusting it. I then rotated the magent in the direction I wanted to bend the scooter's handle bars. I increased the size of the zone really large so to keep the bending distortions as low as possible. Then I adjusted the mag zone falloffs so they were high on the outside of the zone and then adjusted the zone where it worked best. Now most important and really what I am trying to teach with this lesson is this. Look at the location of the base and where the bending is occuring. I was careful that the magnet base was selected and highlighted for this image. Note the crosshairs in the middle of the magnet base,...this is the exact fulcrum of the bend.

Lesson 3: Magnet Base

Now to get familiar with the purpose of the base, I will mutilate this fine little scooter for my demonstration. I have already selected the handle bars and and front suspension group and then loaded on a magnet. Note the positon of the base right now. I am going to bend the handle bars and the headlight so it points strait up instead of how its suposed to be. I will move the base where I want the bed to occur. (warning things do not like to bend with morphs or magents, they tend to distort as you will see, but I am demonstrating the why the position of the base is important for such a task.)

Message edited on: 07/05/2005 14:25

Attached Link: Magnet tutorial by me

Recognizing the need for the skills to be learned, I have began to write a tut working with magnets at the link mentioned. Feel free to join me there. I will be happy to help you make a magnets for you in regards to teaching everyone how its done. You said it was for V3 with low resolution teath. What is low resolution teeth, excuse me for being stupid bout some things. I thought she only had one set of teeth.

sorry for taking so long to get back here, are you still needing to load the figure with the Eyes Bend off?

Lesson 2: Magnet Zone Falloff Graph

You may not need this for a while, its sort of rushing you ahead real fast, but since its handy I may as well introduce you to the Magnet Zone Falloff Graph.

This gives you control of the how the Zone acts. All you have to do to access this is select and double click the magnet zone. The zone properties window will pop up. Select Magnet Zone Falloff

You are presented with a Graph, a red curve, and two points that control that red curve.

For a demonstration of what happens I have posted an image where I selected and raised the right-most point (that little black short line).

Take note here how the arm distortion is mimicing the red curve on the graph. That is no accident. You are changing your degree of control and seeing it both on the graph and on the figure at the same time.

The Left-most control point on that graph is a control ner the center of the zone and the right-most is a control over the outer edge of the zone. You can change the nature of your zone by moving either of these up or down. Dropping the left-most control point will lower the magnets effect in the center of the zone. Raising the right-most control point will raise the effect on the outer edge of the zone.

You can easly add another control point by double clicking the red curve on the graph. Afterwards you can move it add more effects. By adding a series you could make a set of water like ripples across a flat surface or add realistic wrinkles to clothing.

You can remove control points by clicking before on the graph and dragging and a grey area will show up over the selected control points and then hitting your delete button.

You don't have to become familiar with this at this time, but remember its there, you will probably want to use this later.

Message edited on: 07/05/2005 13:46

At this point I can save this distortion as a morph by simply selecting the two groups being distorted in this case and then clicking object-spawn morph target from the popdown menu and naming each morph in each group. I then can dial up the morphs in the parameter dial up to one and delete the magents if I wish making a permenant morph in your figure. I will write more later, I have some business to take care of. Feel free to ask questions. marty

Okay, not that I was pretty sure about my zone of magnet influence, I began adjusting the magnet downard to get a natural body deformation. At this point I may go back and forth adjusting the position, size, etc of the sphere and back to the magent making farther adjustments until its just right.

now keeping the magnet way too strong by raising it up so high, I will select the zone and begin moving it, scaling it, sometimes rotating it. You have all the parameter adjustments at your disposal. Having the magnet in such an exagerated state will help you get the zone just where you want it. In this case I want to give my model larger forearms.

Select the magnet itself and double click it to bring up the properties. There will be a selection called "add element to deform" - click this. You will see a hierarchy of body parts, of all figures in the scene. I am assuming that you are familiar with the usage of this tree. Select the body parts you want or need to add to the magnet's influence. For this demonstration I will only be choosing the hand and the upper arm groups.

note the space between the base (that yellow bar) and the magnet is very similar to the amount of pulling up on the geometry. Also note that the effects seem to be stopping the hand and upper arm, this is because these groups have not been choosen for deformation. Also note distortion is most in the center of the zone (that white outlined sphere) and decreases outward to the parameter of the zone where it eventually becomes zero effect.

Now the first thing I have done was went to the parameter dials for the magnet and raised it so it stretches the geometry up for this demonstration.

Okay lets go to the beginning and start learning. Here is something you can try to get started and begin getting familiar with magnets. I have loaded my figure, selected her ForeArm group and then selected object/Create Magnet. The magent loads and looks like this.

What I am showing you is a progression from simple use of magnets to the complex....so please excuse me for adding this plug for my Market Place items V3-SP3, V3-A3, and V3-AD clothing conversion kits. These packages demonstrate the complex usage of magnets. Here we have many magnets working together as a team to the exact same deformation time after time with any geometry. I have set up three scripts to load all these magents automatically, but I also have made the package friendly to those who want learn from it. I am of course encouraging learning about magnets. I encourage learning about magents because one must in order to get smooth and accurate conversions. I will stand behind the this method and will say that I honestly feel this is the best and most professional conversions you can get with out being too labor intensive. These magnets are a good value even at he price advertised if you consider how much time it would take you to make a similar set for your own usage. You can find these products in Insomniaworks Store. Anyway, enough of the plug...on with the tutorial!