[Released] Mega-Fiers. A mesh deformation system - RELEASE

I have just made some changes to the BezPatch system so you can now turn off the automatic animation and then the system will check for a change to the destwarp value, if it sees a new value it will start the transition to the new warp state using the switch time value. You can either just change the destwarp value from script or use an animation even to call the SetDestWarp method passing in the warp index you want to change to. I will submit an update this evening sometime with the changes in place.

 

Just submitted a small update to the Assetstore, this brings a new feature to the BezPatch system allowing for you to animate the changes more easily as well as using the Unity animation system to control the animation. We have also fixed the latest round of depreciated methods for the final release of Unity 5.6.

Changes in v3.32

• Changes made for the latest Unity 5.6 obsolete methods for the final release of Unity 5.6
• Added new options to the BezPatch system to allow for better control over the animation system.

 

@SpookyCat - I'm using MegaNoise now, manipulating values in Unity's Inspector at the Component level. When I change Strength values for any axis, it seems to additionally transform the gizmo position, not just the Strength value. It appears to behave differently from your YouTube tutorial video where only the Strength changes.

The clot model has had it Transforms reset, rests at 0,0,0 and yet you can see how far from its pivot it has moved in the picture. The Position transform is visible in the video.

http://imgur.com/j4WLGNV

Unrelated: I'm also curious why some Megafiers allow for a regular "Undo" behavior when changing Component values, while others will Undo the addition of the Component, sometimes leaving the affected object in an undesired state.

 

@brian-wanamaker - Just tested here and I am not seeing that behaviour, if you can submit a support ticket and include a link to download the mesh you are using or simple project. Please do not send any files as the support ticket will not get to us.

 

Thanks AS ALWAYS for your help and responsiveness. As you mentioned in the response to the support ticket, the problem was my mesh size, and reducing Mega Noise Scale value to match made it perform similarly to the behavior in the tutorial video.

 

@SpookyCat - Sorry, just realized there's an unanswered question from before:
Unrelated: I'm also curious why some Megafiers allow for a regular "Undo" behavior when changing Component values, while others will Undo the addition of the Component, sometimes leaving the affected object in an undesired state.
It frequently interrupts my work flow, as using Undo can become a nearly unconscious edit. What causes this behavior?

Other than "Don't use Undo" is there a workaround?

 

I have a particle simulation in Maya that I need to bring into Unity, but the website says the Maya exporter is still in beta.

Is the Maya exporter stable yet?

If so, is MegaCache cheaper than using bones for each particle? Does it run on mobile?

 

@kirby85 - MegaFiers doesn't do particles, I think you should probably post in the MegaCache asset thread https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/megacache-object-particle-sequence-playback-released.287906/ But for a quick answer I have the Maya exporter and it works fine, and using bones for particles? Didn't even know you could link particles to bones or even why but can't imagine that can be very fast? If you post in the other thread you may need to expand on what it is you are trying to do.

 

Thanks, I went ahead and posted there. Didn't know about that thread.

Yeah you can do that in Maya, but I think the only way is through MEL scripting. Bones are a last resort.

 

@SpookyCat

Hi Chris, I sent you an email requesting the Morph Exporter for Maya 2017, 64 bit.

Thanks.

 

Hi Adam
I sent the exporter off to you this morning, your email came in at 2am UK time. Also it is better to use the support ticket system over general emails as they get dealt with before general email requests as time allows.

 

@SpookyCat , hi! In my current project, I'm using Mega World Path Deform and Mega Taper on a relatively high poly model. My framerate is taking a big hit, so I've reduced the mesh as far as I dare, but do you (or anyone else here!) have tips for restoring some pep to my framerate?

I'm also curious about this error in my console – my Megafiers is up-to-date, but we're on Unity 5.4.2

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. Instantiating mesh due to calling MeshFilter.mesh during edit mode. This will leak meshes. Please use MeshFilter.sharedMesh instead.
3. UnityEngine.MeshFilter:get_mesh()
4. MegaModifyObject:FindMesh1(GameObject, GameObject&) (at Assets/Mega-Fiers/Scripts/MegaFiers/Modifiers/MegaModifyObject.cs:259)
5. MegaModifyObject:ReStart1(Boolean) (at Assets/Mega-Fiers/Scripts/MegaFiers/Modifiers/MegaModifyObject.cs:137)
6. MegaModifyObject:Reset() (at Assets/Mega-Fiers/Scripts/MegaFiers/Modifiers/MegaModifyObject.cs:63)
7. UnityEditor.HostView:OnGUI()
8.  

 

The nature of the way MegaFiers works does mean more vertices equals more CPU time, have you turned on Multithreading at runtime? This generally more than halves the CPU used and usually a fair bit more.
As for the error I don't think you have the latest version as the line numbers do not match up, the mesh copy system was changed a few updates ago and it looks like you are using a version of MegaFiers from before that update.

 

Thanks as always for your speedy responses!

I'm sorry, you are correct about the Megafiers version not being current. I backed-up, updated Megafiers, and it returned this error:

Code (csharp):

1. Assets/Mega-Fiers/Scripts/MegaFiers/MegaShape/MegaShapeRBodyPath.cs(4,14): error CS0101: The namespace `global::' already contains a definition for `MegaShapeRBodyPath'

…which prevents the script from loading. I've reverted for now.

I'll ask my programmer about multithreading. Thanks again!

 

If you check the release notes back at v3.11 we moved that script from its wrong location to the correct one to allow MegaShapes and MegaFiers to be installed together without causing an error, the Unity asset installer though is not clever enough to spot such changes and remove the old file so you have to do it manually, just delete the version that is in the test scenes folder.
It is better to submit support tickets instead of posting here as the forum notifications just don't work sometimes, also how many people are using the asset?

 

Yes, that makes sense. I'll go through the support page for error stuff. Sorry about that!

 

Just submitted another small update to the Asset store, this stops animated modifiers from changing in Edit mode in Unity 5.4 and newer, and I also removed the check to only update selected objects in edit more which was causing small issues like objects being deformed by splines not updating if the spline was moved or change in edit mode.

Changes in v3.34

• Changed animation system to stop animated modifiers from updating in edit mode when not playing.
• Took out the check to only update modified objects if selected which was causing unexpected effects and objects not updating when dependencies were changed.

 

Submitted another update to the Asset Store, this brings the version of MegaCache OBJ playback system up to date with the full version seeing numerous improvements and fixes to the OBJ sequence importer and playback.

Changes in v3.35

• Changed file sequence importers to work without need for split character or format number, so now works correctly.
• Updated OBJ file importer to be able to handle negative indices.
• Changed OBJ material importer so you wont get an error if Material texture map fields are empty in the OBJ file.
• MegaCache made fully Unity 2017 compatible.
• Sopped MegaCache OBJ animated system from animating in edit mode.
• Fixed a problem with importing materials.
• MegaCache now fully compatible with Unity 5.6
• Changed various importers to work around the Monobehaviour bug for StringReader making importing of files with Unix line endings very very slow.
• OBJ Material importer will now create Standard Shader materials instead of Legacy shaders.
• Added an error message when trying to import an OBJ file which contains faces with more than 4 sides, the OBJ importer only supports quads and tris.
• MegaCache now fully compatible with Unity 5.5
• Improved the material importer so will use names in mtllib instead of expecting same filenames as obj files.
• Option added to force calculation of normals on import, this will override any normals in the OBJ files.
• OBJ files which contain no normals will now have normals calculated on import.
• Material importer now removes any ':' found in the material names, ':' can not be used in asset names in Unity.
• Material importer now defaults alpha value to 1 instead of 0 is alpha component missing, this stops meshes from being invisible after import.
• Fixed bug where mesh would not display if multiple materials were found in the OBJ sequence but load materials is not selected.
• MegaCache is fully 5.4 compatible.
• Added option to update mesh collider for Object Cache.

 

Another quick update, this fixes a problem in the Prefab system where if you made a prefab from a deformed mesh it would be double deformed when you added it back into a scene. We also improved the Spline Undo feature to undo all the changes you could make to a spline instead of just the moving of knots, so adding or deleting knots, flattening, reversing, open or closing the spline etc.

Changes in v3.37

• The Undo for MegaShapes now recognizes adding and deleting of knots as well other the other options that change the spline such as Autocurve, scale etc.
• Fixed bug in Make Prefab where if a mesh was deformed when prefab was made it would be double deformed when the prefab was added to a scene.
• Removed an object from the demo scene with an invalid vertex that would stop the demo scene building on Mobile platforms.

 

@SpookyCat

I emailed you to see if I can get the Maya Morph Exporter. Thanks.

 

Hello I am having some trouble making prefabs of my Mega Cache OBJ objects. When I make a prefab or a Mega Prefab, they will have missing meshes and materials. I also can't copy paste the object from scene to scene. What is the recommended workflow for getting Mega Cache obj prefabs? I saw hints of the problems on previous posts in this thread but still not quite grasping it.

Many Thanks!

 

I posted a couple of issues I was having (beginner issues), and I've solved them now.

So I'll just say thanks for this great tool!

 

Has anyone been able to Import or load an SVG file into a MegaShape component?

I tried everything I could think of, using Inkscape , online converters, it always loads empty. What am I missing? I'm totally stuck because I can't load my path (it's in DXF).

 

An update has been submitted to the asset store today, this brings a fix for the MegaCache OBJ sequence exporter so it works if filenames just has numbers in it, we also updated the SVG importer so it works with comma separated variables as well as space separated which was stopping some SVG files from importing. We also added a couple of extra features to the Bez Patch system.

Changes since v3.37

• MegaCache OBJ seq import now works if the file names are just numbers.
• SVG importer updated to handle SVG files with ' ' seperators as well as ','.
• Added an Align option to Bez Patch object which will automatically position non corner control points to be aligned with the edges.
• Added Init Lattice context menu option to reset the Lattice points on a bez patch object.
• Added Align context menu option to Bez Patch object to align non corner control points.

 

Another small update, this makes MegaFiers fully compatible with Unity 2017.2 and with Unity 2017.3. We also had a request to add an inverse selection option to the Volume Selection and Multi Volume Selection modifiers which will inverse the selection set for you, also did a small optimization to the volume selection modifiers as well.

Changes in v3.40

• Added inverse option to Volume Selection modifier to invert the selection.
• Added inverse option to the Multi volume selection modifier to invert the selection.
• Small optimization to the volume selection modifiers.
• MegaFiers is now fully compatible with Unity 2017.3
• MegaFiers is now fully compatible with Unity 2017.2

 

@SpookyCat

Hi Chris, were you able to get the morph plugin working in Maya 2018 64bit? Also should the plugin work for LT as well? There's seems to be a bug for their sculpt tools in Maya, but not LT which is what I'm currently using. Thanks.

 

Hello @SpookyCat Can you please post a link to the modifier in the asset store? or tell me it's name?
I would like to use it for importing a .mdd file from Blender to Unity3d 2017.1.1f1

 

@Eco-Editor - If you click the MegaFiers link in my signature below it will take you to the asset store page for it.

 

Quick note to say if anyone is having trouble editing splines in Unity 2017.2 we will be submitting a fix for this this weekend.

 

We have submitted an update to the asset store to fix the spline editing issue in 2017.2.

Change in v3.41

• Fixed an issue in Unity 2017.2 that stopped the spline knots from being moved.

 

Hello, I've sent you an email and a support ticket but I've had no response. I'm trying to use Megafiers' prefab tools to create an animation along a path, but when I spawn my prefab, the object moving along the path is distorted and offset in a weird way. I've tested Create Mega Prefab and Create MegaShape Prefab and I'm not getting good results with either of them. I've tested a bunch of different settings, options, hierarchies - just about everything I can think of and it just seems like your prefab tools are not functioning correctly. Can you please look at the more detailed support ticket I sent you and get back to me?

 

@yusefkerr - I do believe I responded to your first ticket and I am in the process of dealing with other support tickets at the moment, it was only yesterday afternoon you sent through your last ticket and it is not possible for me to be at my desk 24 hours, I will be getting back to you when I have completed other requests that are ahead of yours and had time to look into the problem so expect to hear something from me as soon as I can.

Edit: You have a reply to your ticket now

 

Hello, thanks for replying. Do I have to submit a ticket through the website every time or can you respond if I reply to your initial answer via email? I've already replied to your last message. I understand you have other things to deal with but I'm having very erratic issues trying to set up a basic WorldPathDeform and create a prefab from it and I've just tried with the PathDeform instead and the results are different every time I press play! It's all very frustrating and time consuming.

 

Hi, I'm considering buying megafiers on the asset store, but I only really need one feature, the "Skinned Wrap" feature for a character with blendshapes, so I wanted to ask to make sure it will work for me before I buy it. I watched the feature video on youtube, but I'd like to make clothing swapable for a character/npc customizer, can I make prefabs of clothing that are mapped to the base character mesh, instantiate one and just set the target to a new instance of the base character without re-mapping? I saw it takes a long time to map, is it even possible to remap in runtime if that's required?

I'd be happy to buy it and check everything myself, do you give refunds in case I find it doesn't fit what I'm trying to do?

 

Is there a possibility for this awesome asset to go on sale before the mega sale ends?

 

Can somebody, anybody please help me with this issue. For the past week I have tried and researched this problem but when I try wrapping clothing on my characters it takes a very long time to process (Over 17 hours according to calculations on Lowest Quality Setting).

 

@SpookyCat

 

@newfinalflashers - If you could submit a support ticket at our website we can help you out there.

 

@SpookyCat I'm considering buying this asset but it depends on the next question about the functionality of the asset:
Will Bezier Attractor for water work on a mesh/shader that is already doing it's own vertex deformation?
I want to mix it with some Water System assets like Suimono Water System for example which are already deforming vertexes and creating waves.

 

@Stickeyd - MegaFiers changes the positions of the vertices in a mesh so it happens independently of any shader, so if you have a shader that further deforms a mesh it will happen on top of and add to any deformation MegaFiers applies.

 

@SpookyCat I finally got the Megawrap to work. I have added a ton of clothing items to my character and was wondering if one of the many morphing systems in megafiers would be able to deform the meshes once again to remove clipping through other clothes at runtime after the wrap. Example: I have several hair options and hat options and I want it to recalc the morph of the hair so that way the hat does not have hair clipping through it if they decide to enable a hat. The shrink option is nice but this doesn't fully meet my needs as there are several hundred combinations of clothes that would require different shrinking values and gap values depending on which clothes were enabled. I would also like to have a priority system that determines which meshes should be conformed to other meshes based on which mesh is ranked higher. I just need the morph to be calculated once. What do you think is my best option. Thanks ahead of time

 

I am very happy, just got around to trying out ProBuilder which is a great boon, great time saver for me building test levels, but even happier that it works perfectly with MegaFiers allowing me to recreate my 3ds max workflow inside Unity, so I can add bends, twists, path deforms and most importantly for me FFD lattices. Quick grab below showing stairs flared with an FFD then part of it bent, an arch with a FFD lattice allowing me to enlarge the top and then a noise modifier on top and then stairs deformed along a spline.

 

Just submitted a small update to the Assetstore, this makes MegaFiers fully compatioble with the upcoming release of Unity 2018.1, we also made some changes so MegaFiers now builds correctly for Hololens apps and we fixed a small bug in the Prefab system which meant some modifiers would look wrong.

Changes in v3.43

• MegaFiers now works with the Hololens platform.
• MegaFiers updated to be compatible with Unity 2018.1
• Removed unused assets from the package
• Fixed a bug where some modifiers would look wrong after being added into a scene from a prefab.

 

@MikeUpchat - Good to know, the author of Probuilder contacted us a while back as he was making sure Probuilder worked nicely with MegaFiers, they do make a good combination, as you say very similar to working in Max, hopefully Probuilder will expand now it is part of Unity.

 

Hey Mega-Fiers team, quick question -

I'm trying to apply modifiers to an animated skinned mesh. The Mesh deforms as expected, but in the process, the animations gets really wonky. It seems the skeleton remains unaffected by the modifiers and ends up trying to put the vertices where the ought to be had the mesh not been deformed by a mega modifier. This results in a crazy, Slender Man-like appearance for humanoid models, especially when the modifier is set to higher values.

Is there any way to have mega modifiers apply after animation is updated, to prevent appendages from noodling all over the scene?

I've tried setting the mega modifier to render on Late Update or OnRender, but this doesn't make any noticeable improvement.

 

As Skinning is generally done on the GPU now it is not possible to deform a mesh a great deal relative to its bones, we are looking to add support for getting the baked skinned vertices and then deforming those but that will come with an overhead as Unity has to bake the mesh on the CPU, then we fetch the data, apply the deformation and then send it all back so not sure how perform-ant that will be, for most cases it should be fine. But the option will be added in the new version of MegaFiers we are working on for 2018 on-wards But in the meantime deformations for skinned meshes should be kept in the space of the bones deforming them, you can use the vertex selection modifiers to limit the effect of a modifier to a specific region, say the head, or torso.

 

Brilliant, thanks for the insight. Looking forward to the new version! Love megafiers; they inevitably make it into every project I've worked on

On a slightly tangential note, ya'll posted a video a few months ago with some really cool terrain deforming tech (tire in the snow), any chance we'll see that on the asset store someday? I would buy that up in a heart beat.

 

The Snow system along with a load of other things are systems we are using in our game project, we do plan on releasing those as assets when the game is near release but really have no idea when that is. There is another snow tracks system on the asset store, it does things in a different way so maybe even better for your project, our system is pretty much just for doing different tire marks in different surfaces.

 

is there a way to add dynamic content to a page mesh the same way it's added to a book page?

Also, I noticed that even though a text mesh pro object will deform properly when using path deform, you cannot get the textmesh to deform on the Y axis using a bend.

 

You can use the Attach system to attach objects to a turning page or any other deforming mesh.
Not having any problems bending Text Mesh Pro objects here, have you tried using the Dir value and or Gizmo Rotation values.