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

News - MegaFiers - 2 Is in the Asset Store now | Forum Post​

Mega-Fiers is out in the Asset store. Easily adjust and make new versions of your meshes with them bent, squashed, stretched etc or any combination of such effects. Why have just one variety of a mesh in your game, with Mega-Fiers you can endless varieties all made inside Unity, plus animate them easily to add real time deformation effects.

Overview
The system is inspired by the Modifier system in 3ds max, so if you are familiar with how that works then you should feel at home. The system allows for stackable modifiers so you can do multiple bends for examples. The framework is written in C# and will work on all platforms iPhone/Android/Web etc and the user can add their own modifiers as easily as overriding a Map method in the Modifier class. You can deform meshes in the editor or at run time seamlessly. Just added UV modification support and adding more modifiers all the time. The system also updates any mesh colliders attached to the object and will recreate tangent space if required by shaders.

Advanced Morphing
One of the key features of MegaFiers is the advanced morpher, you can create your own morphs from OBJ files or make use of our custom exporters for Max, Maya, Blender and Lightwave to easily export your morph and blendshapes along with their animations from your favoiurite 3d package directly into Unity, the morph system, like all the modifiers, works just as well on skinned meshes so you can now easily added facial animations to your characters or create custom Avatar systems for your games. The morph system allows any number of channels to be used and each channel can have any number of targets so allowing very complex and detailed morphs to be created. The data is optimized during import so only data that changes is used and the playback is very fast as only channels that have an effect and only the vertices that change in that channel are updated.

The morph system also comes with extras that allow you to wrap meshes on to your deforming meshes, and systems to link morphs to bone movements so allowing muscle bulges. You can also break your imported morph animations up into clips and play them back using the API.

Some of the modifiers included:
MegaFiers comes with nearly 50 modifiers to use in your game some of them are listed below.

• Bend
• Bubble
• Bulge
• Cylindrify
• Displace
• FFD (2x2x2, 3x3x3, 4x4x4) (Lattice in Maya)
• Hump
• Melt
• Morph
• Noise
• Path Deform
• Page Flip
• Point Cache Animation
• Pivot Adjust
• Push
• Radial Skew
• Relax
• Ripple
• Rubber
• Skew
• Spherify
• Stretch
• Taper
• Twist
• UV Adjust
• UV Tile Animate
• Wave
• Many more

And the following World Space Warps:

• Bend
• Noise
• Ripple
• Skew
• Stretch
• Taper
• Twist
• Wave

Other systems that come with MegaFiers

• Full spline system
• Spline to mesh options
• Max and Maya spline importing
• SVG Importer
• Dynamic Hose system
• Animated Tracked Vehicle System
• Spline Path follow system
• XML Parser

I will be adding more modifiers to the system near future. Hopefully the system will be expanded by community generated Modifiers as well. Some videos showing some of what the system can do is below. The price is $150. You can find some more info at MegaFier Help Page or visit the FaceBook page for MegaFiers I hope someone finds a good use for this and you do get any nice results please post or send them to me.
Chris

 

What about Morph ?
When will it be released ?

 

Adding the morph system is next on the list, just added 13 new modifiers including space warps which I am just testing at the moment and hope to have a new release today sometime. Should take a day or so before I get the Morph code in as well so possibly over the weekend if not next early next week
Chris

 

Great news!
You were also talking about a possible bridge and as I'm doing my stuff in Max, I was wondering about that.
How could it work ? Will you release it ?
yann.

 

Hi
The max support is taken out at the moment if people really want it I will look at adding it it back either as an extension to Mega-Fiers or as a separate system as it handles exporting everything from max to unity via a custom fbx exporter, so it can do materials, maps, controllers, modifiers, physics, helpers, splines and all with custom scripts to import and make those work in Max. The code needs a bit of cleaning up at the moment as it has support for the 100 odd custom modifiers and systems we use for our stuff at the moment. Ill get the new modifiers and morphing done first and then get onto that
Chris

 

That thread in showcase by p6r probably just sold me on this asset. Cheers!

 

Just put up a video showing some of the system being used in the Unity Editor and showing a very small sample of some of the effects you can achieve, also shows some of the new Space Warps that will be in the next release.
Chris
[video=youtube;QtaDVxRTmOw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtaDVxRTmOw
And a couple of grabs from the new test scene

 

the new youtube vids are helpful, thanks

 

Quick video of Spherify modifier in action.

 

Nice system for sure...

Will users who purchase Mega-Fiers now receive the max update for FREE? --- how long before max support including exporter will be available?

I'm very close to making a purchase but I'd really like to know what performance metrics or timing estimations you can provide for realtime usage? Is there a performance savings for deforming once, as in the case of that deformed bridge, as opposed to a constantly animating deform?

Is your system currentlytly[/U] extensible? Can our side write our own modifiers?

Must a model be built to specific requirements to work optimally in Mega-Fiers?

Thank you!

 

Hi There
I am still wondering which way to go with the Max exporter, currently the modifier exporter is linked in with the Everything exporter I have for Max to Unity, I think I may well do it via a separate system to export mod data to xml in which case yes it would be be included in the system. As for when I can get that done it will be a few weeks before I can get around to that. I have the warp release to get out hopefully today (final testing at the moment) and then I need to add the Morph system to it as that will be a key feature for many users, ie using the mods in the editor to produce morph targets and then collapse it all to a single optimized morph modifier instead of having a stack of deformations on a mesh.

The way the mesh is built really depends on how you plan on modifying it. For example if you had a pipe that you wanted to bend then just having vertices at the top and bottom of the pipe will not give you a good result so you would add a few more vertices along the length.

As for performance figures I will do a chart to show timings off each modifiers on a mesh. The plane in the test scene is 38,000 vertices and 43,000 triangles and that runs 60fps+ on my PC with a fair few modifiers running every frame. Of course you can disable the system at anytime to be left with the deformation so then you have no overhead at all it's just another mesh. Or can use it like others have done purely as an editor tool to give variation to existing assets, or producing morph targets etc. I did do a test on an Android Motorola Defy of a 1000 vert sphere with a Bend modifier (quite a complex mod) and that was taking 7ms.

Yes you can add your own modifiers, you just need to derive a new class from the Modifier class and can be just as simple as providing your own Map method. For example:

Code (csharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2.  
3. [AddComponentMenu("Modifiers/Simple")]
4. public class SimpleMod : Modifier
5. {
6.     public float    amount    = 0.0f;
7.  
8.     public override string ModName() { return "Simple"; }
9.  
10.     public override Vector3 Map(int i, Vector3 p)
11.     {
12.         p.x += Random.value * amount;
13.         p.y += Random.value * amount;
14.         p.z += Random.value * amount;
15.         return p;
16.     }
17. }

Produces the result below.
[video=youtube;KqP9_zeTnNc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqP9_zeTnNc

 

Thanks for providing this information.
I will be purchasing the system and look forward to all the cool new features you have planned. Will provide you as much useful feedback after our team puts it through the paces!
Best

 

Version 1.12 submitted to the store as well as some small bug fixes the following is new in v1.12:

• Added wip page flip modifier
• Added UV Adjust modifier
• Added UV Tile/Animate modifier
• Added Space Warp support
• Added Bend warp modifier
• Added Noise Warp modifier
• Added Ripple Warp modifier
• Added Skew Warp modifier
• Added Stretch Warp Modifier
• Added Taper Warp modifier
• Added Twist Warp modifier
• Added Wave Warp modifier
• Added colors to gizmo display
• Region gizmos positioned correctly now.
• Instancing bug fixed.
• Hid some params from the animator.
• Added support for uv modifiers.
• Added gizmo icons for scripts.
• Added help images to each script.
• Added editor scripts and gizmo to move offset.
• Added falloff to Spherify modifier.
• Added Bulge modifier, works like Spherify but per axis.
• Added Cylindrify modifier.
• Added context functions to reset/center Offsets and gizmo positions and rotations. (Right click script bar)
• Fixed chance of gimzo orientation being wrong when modifiers attached to parent of mesh object.

 

!! Whoa, so many useful new additions. and did I hear a mention of a "morph system", ;-).... fingers crossed. One of the best tools I've purchased on the Unity Asset Store!!!

 

What about the physics?
Do mega-fiers also convert or change to different coliders like mesh colider?

Is this working on ios and android?

 

Hi There
Thank you zhx I look forward to seeing any results you get from the system.

I am working on the morph system now, should be done over the weekend. Again it is based on the 3ds max system so you can have multiple morph channels all running together and each channel can have multiple progressive targets so the artist can really fine tune the morphs. If you have used the 3ds Max morph then that is pretty much what you will get in the next update.

I will be adding the option to update collider meshes after I get the morphing in. Lots more improvements to come as well over the next few releases.

And yes it works on Android and ios As mentioned above a mesh with 1000 vertices and a complex bend modifier applied took 7ms to update the mesh on a Motorola Defy Android phone.
Chris

 

What if i do use other 3D software like Messiah and Lightwave zbrush and 3D coat (where i can save the morph maps out).
Can i use the morphs also or do i only can use them if i had 3ds Max?

 

To start with the system will use meshes in your project for targets, so you would import each target mesh as normal and add them via the Gui. Its going to be a major undertaking to do exporters for every 3d package out there so not sure what the best approach to that is. I do have a full exporter for Max but that is no use to Blender/Cinema/Lightwave etc users. Any ideas on how you would like it to work shout now and I'll look into it as well. This is pretty much the reason I didn't release the Morph system ages back as it was linked to Max for its data.
Chris

 

Might be worthwhile to look at Maya blendshape deformer. Years back we used this to achieve good werewolf transformation.
also would like to see a proper morph system modulated by weight map all channels included.
but i'm a lil' greedy!

 

for the morph system, and this is key IMO, I'd suggest going with the ability to load in an external format that support VERTEX ORDER/NUMBERING, aka vertex order for the OBJ format(and most formats). This way, you can have your base mesh, with the mega-fiers script on it, and load in obj's(or fbx, etc) that have been saved with their VERTEX ORDER SAVED, which is the default in most apps, the mega-fiers script can then transform the vertices based on their VERTEX ID#.

This is standard in the industry, its how you load(and export) in transformed morph-targets in ZBrush and most sculpting apps. Import BASE OBJ, then import the morph/blendshape/shapekey/etc exported OBJ with its VERTEX ORDER INTACT, then the app of choice handles all individual vertex transforming. Or, in ZBrush's case, load in the base OBJ, then sculpt away, then export the newly sculpted morph-target as OBJ, then import back into app of choice(Blender/Maya/etc), as a morph-target(blendshape/shapekey/etc).

This will work for C4D/LightWave/Blender/Maya/Max/etc.... anything that can export an obj with its vertex order intact. This has been the standard means used in the industry for porting around morph-targets for years now.

This approach is APP-INDEPENDENT, any app that can export to a vertex-order-respecting OBJ format will work for this method, so nearly every major(And not so major) 3D Suite can do this now.

*****
some reading on the subject here:
http://www.royriggs.com/obj.html (though I'm pretty sure you might already be familiar with this method)

 

This is an amazing tool! Well worth the purchase and looks like it's going to keep getting better and better.

Looking forward to this coming!

 

You're going to make a fortune. I'm buying this today.

 

Hi There
Just finishing up adding morphing into the mix. I have put a video up so you can see a brief run through of the workflow. I have gone with the suggestion of using .obj files to handle the vertex mapping and targets/shapekeys and channels. So currently the system can support any number of morph channels and each channel can have any number of targets/shapekeys to define the morph. The morphing is done via a bezier system to give a much smoother look to the end results but if that isnt desired the amount of 'tension' can be increased or reduced to suit your needs.

Also the morphing is performed with the original data from the 3d software iinstead of with the Unity mesh which saves a lot of overhead, in the example in the video the Unity mesh has 1056 vertices but the morph uses the original 666 vertices. All the targets, channels and vertex mapping is handled via .obj files which any 3d software can export so the system can be used by anyone. Hope to have this uploaded to the asset store tonight.
Chris

[video=youtube;GIgRGxHW3cc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIgRGxHW3cc

 

AWESOME!!!!! When is the Morphing planned to be added to the Asset Store version? Cant wait to test this out, see how it benchmarks on iOS devices. Thank you for such a powerful new additions to an already great tool. Your attention to optimization is MUCH appreciated.

 

New version (1.17) submitted to the store. Let me know if you have trouble with the morph system at all, I hope it is fairly easy to use and understand. Many things to look out for when exporting to the obj files is that everything is positioned at 0,0,0, and also that you get the scaling to match the value unity used when it imported the original mesh you are wanting to morph. Iam trying to catch the scaling issue for future versions.
Chris

Note: Make sure you get v1.17 and not 1.16, there was a bug on the optimized morph path for a single target morph channel.

Changes:

• Added morph modifier.

• Added a PivotAdjust modifier, allows you to reposition the pivot, and or rotate/scale the mesh to get a new starting mesh.

• Added gizmos to show gizmo offset and position details.

• Changing a warp source on a WarpBind modifier now works properly.

• Tidied up the UVAdjust mod, uses gizmo values and Offset now instead of duplicating params.

• Added gizmo display for UVAdjust

 

Hi,

THIS is a great job.
Have you considered an export of realflow (Http://www.realflow.com/) or RayFire ( http://rayfirestudios.com/ ) ?

JP

 

I am very glad to have purchased such a great tool. your work on refining and polishing it is great, thank you!! cant wait to test 1.17. And thank you for going with the OBJ format, for the morph system, now those of us that use different tools in our pipelines can use the system thanks to the "universal" OBJ format.

 

Thank you ZJP. Funny you should mention realflow as I have done a system for our particle stuff that uses fumefx but I think that would all end up in a seperate package, I do plan on converting our primitive system fully to Unity as a new extension soon so who knows what will end up in there, I was even half way through our own DMM system

And thanks zhx, the obj format works quite well, would have been nicer if it kept local vertex positions but Ill tidy that side up and make it even easier to use in future versions. I see the new version is up yep, guess the Unity folk have their hands full with E3 and pending 3.4 release, hopefully it will work it's way through the system today, and I very much look forward to seeing a pic or two or any results you get from it.
Chris

 

Took a little time to filter through but version 1.17 with morphing is in the Asset store now. Look forward to seeing a shot or two and or feature requests
Chris

 

nice 1.17 testing time
thanks for yet another great update !!!
cannot wait to test out the morph system

 

Couple of new version submitted to the store up to 1.19 now. There was a bug in the obj parser for some obj files, ie ones where the group name was saved before the vertex info. Anyway fixed now. Other changes are:

• Shows memory usage for morph

• Added common modifier params to morph gui

• Loading targets to an empty channel will set the channel name to the file name of the targets

• Error boxes shown for mapping or target import issues.

• Added limits to a morph channel so you can use only part of a morph or reverse a morph etc.

 

Yet another update( 1.20). Seems not all Obj files are created alike, so I have added a couple more import setting params the morph gui to allow you to flipzy axis and or negate x axis. This should cover most cases of being able to massage any obj file into the equivalent unity format. For example if exporting from 3ds you may need to set the flipzy box. I will try to get auto detection of such things in a future version.
Chris

 

man, you're on fire with these updates!!! Thank you VERY much for your dedication to polishing this already great tool!!! One of the best purchases a team with "vertex animation in mind" can make IMO!!! Get it now on the Asset Store if you already havent

 

Bought this last night, awesome tool spookycat. p6r's thread sold me on it as well

One question though; whenever I try to use FFD in-editor, I can move the handles around, but it doesn't actually deform anything. Am I missing something?

 

Hi Legend411
Thank you for the purchase, I hope it lives up to your expectations and I really look forward to seeing any results you get from the system.

Arr yes that is in interesting problem, for now you can make it work by right clicking the Modify Object script bar and click 'Reset' or even 'Reset Mesh Info', that kicks it into life. I suspect I have an issue with Awake not being called right on derived classes or something. I will get onto fixing it. Thanks for finding that.
Chris

Edit: A Reset wasn't being called on the FFD modifiers so they weren't being added to the internal stack. Fixed now, version 1.22 submitted to the store.

 

Hey guys, Look here (more at the bottom of the page) : http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/90153-An-infinity-of-3D-models-from...-just-one-model-!!!/page2 !!!
Especially people who my work interesting enough to buy this great plugin...

6R

 

Just got a new version ready to go. The importing of morph files should now work no matter if the scaling doesnt match the unity imported version of the mesh and if the up axis is different or handiness of the mesh is different, the system will attempt to find the correct settings automatically, which should make life a lot nicer. Also fixed the slow loading of obj files. Will be putting the new version up tonight.
Chris

 

nice and VERY welcome fix, thanks SpookyCat

 

Hi,
Awesome work!
I'll start some testing next week.
I have a question for you, as it looks like you have a very good knoledge of bot max and Unity.
I'm the creator of talking carl and a few other talking guys and I would love to be able to replicate in Unity the way I animate in 3DSMax but that would demand the existence of a TurboSmooth modifier in Unity. Do you think it's doable ?
My object stack in Max is this Mesh>Morph>Bones>Meshsmooth. That allows me to have super duper smooth deformation that I can't have with highpoly mesh.
Anyway I'll try it and will share with you the result soon but if you could enhance Unity with a turbosmooth of some sort, it would be awesome!
Thanks in advance,
yann.
www.talkingcarl.com

 

@ yannalaplage : WOW ! Very nice characters !!!
Your question is interesting... Wait and see...

You can see some of my other morphs here : http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/90...rom...-just-one-model-!!!?p=596215#post596215

6R

 

Yet another great scene p6r That is a serious amount of morphs you have there.

Update submitted to the store v1.23. Changes in this are:

• Added auto detection of import params for obj files when adding mapping to a morph. If anyone has an fbx obj combo that doesnt automatically map then please send it to me and I'll refine the system to detect the reason.

• Fixed slow loading on some obj files.

• Deleted modifiers correctly removed from internal list

• Fixed bug that stopped a morphed mesh with further modifiers applied from being deformed.

As for turbosmooth, that isn't something I've ever looked at in Max, but I will have a look and see if I can figure out what it does. If I can figure it out and it's not something that takes ages to calculate then maybe its something I could add, but no promises
Chris

 

ouch, a realtime smoothing algorithm, and reacting to a mesh deform, so perhaps very expensive if it needed to be moved to lateUpdate. But yeah I use a similar method on certain projects in blender, with the exact same stack as your 3DS Max stack. Would be very useful, either way, but would have to be darn optimized for any mobile platform imo.

 

Bad start.
My obj export from max just freeze Unity when I add the ModifyObject Modifier.
Can you have a look at them ?
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2330216/models.zip
thank you.
yann.

 

Hi Yann, Looking into that now. Do you have an fbx as well?

First point, the latest version hasn't been approved by Unity yet, the version in the store is still 1.22, so the autodetect feature isnt in the version you have at the moment.

Edit: Not seeing any freezing here, added Modify Object and a Bend and its modifying away. Investigating some more

Those obj files are going to be hard to autodetect on, firstly the mapping info should really only be one object in the file or at least the first object in the file, I will see about adding support for obj files with more than object in but at the moment for the mapping part I assume the first object is the one to use and in those obj files it's the third. It wont take me along to run through every object it finds so I will fix that today.

The other problem is that target obj files should again just hold targets for the mesh that you are morphing not a lot of other objects as well. I stripped out the extra objects and have the ammping loading and target loading but that showed another problem. The topology in the gugl base 02 file is totally different from the first file, and that is just impossible to cater for on a target. How are you generating the targets?

 

the problem wasn't in the model but in the project!!!!
I created and empty project and adding automaticaly at start your plugs and a few others... and it broke! I can send you this project if you want.
I started over with an empty one, add your plug through unity asset store and it now works fine.
Anyway I'm still a bit confused on how to do things, do you have some sort of help besides the video?
thanks,
yann.

 

Thats good to hear If you want to send me the problem project, I will check it out to make sure it wasnt my code causing the problem I will be doing some tutorial videos very soon and hopefully some nicer looking docs. New version is still pending review, I will post when its up.

 

where are the docs ?
I'm mostly looking into morphs as other stuff is quite easy.

 

This is MONSTRUOUS.

 

ok, found the morph movie... http://www.youtube.com/user/Gawaine1066#p/u/12/GIgRGxHW3cc

Would be nice to have a page listing those...
yann.

 

Still not much luck!
exported 2 models from max in .obj but "load maping" fail.
here are the models : http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2330216/model_from_max.zip
that is if I do everything correctly.