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-   -   Maya Background Constraint - How? (https://simplymaya.com/forum/showthread.php?t=37120)

cgisoul 23-01-2012 07:37 AM

Maya Background Constraint - How?
 
1 Attachment(s)
Hi,

I'm working on my character suit and I need to put some wires and muscles likes fibers on his chest and shoulders. However, after modeling the fiber (basically just a tube), how can I make the tube lay on the sphere in the attached example? Please
Is there any training / video available showing the process?

Thank you.

daverave 23-01-2012 08:16 AM

You can change the shirt mesh to ncloth it has some presets and your shoulder to passive collinder..............dave

cgisoul 23-01-2012 09:43 AM

Hi Dave,

Thank you for your tips. I was more looking towards something similar to this one:
Modo For Noobs - Background Constraint Trick - YouTube
Thanks again. Meanwhile, will explore the nCloth method.
Cheers.

daverave 23-01-2012 10:03 AM

I dont know of any thing like that in maya but there might be a plugin.............dave

bullet1968 23-01-2012 10:14 AM

be nice wouldnt it dave?

ctbram 23-01-2012 10:15 AM

There is no background constraint in maya. I flip in and out of modo just for this feature and I have made several posts in this forum that mention how useful a feature it is. I also placed a request in the official autodesk / maya feature request thread.

There is a very old plugin called "polyshrinkwrap". It is old, really really old, buggy, and way over complicated to use.

Maya is very customizable; However if such a tool / plugin / script has ever been written no one has been willing to share it.

The closest thing you have in maya is Dave's suggestion to try and use ncloth which is complicated and offers very little control or you can make the target surface live and then try to line the camera up as close to normal as possible by eye and then snap the verts (one by one) to the live target surface. Which is time consuming and tedious to say the least.

ctbram 23-01-2012 10:32 AM

Here is a possible solution for your example though.

goal: you want to apply piping along a surface

method:

1. make the target surface live
2. snap a cv or ep curve onto the surface where you want the piping
3. extrude a nurbs circle along the curve

cgisoul 23-01-2012 11:08 AM

Thank you again guys. I used modo background constraint once for my Captain beleza hat work and it worked like a charm. As a new Maya user, I'm surprised to heard that it doesn't have such tool (besides nCloth). I'm afraid the nCloth result might not be what I'm after, but I'm going to give it a shoot and see how it will turn out. Something new to learn never hurt anyone ;)

ctbram, I'll try that, thanks for the tips mate.

ctbram 23-01-2012 11:26 AM

ncloth is not going to work for the tube. I would strongly suggest you make the surface live and draw curves on the surface and then extrude a nurbs circle along the curves.

Also I am surprised to hear that the modo background constraint worked for the tube because as you push the tube to the surface the section that hits the sphere first will get flattened as you push the tube far enough for the outer ends of the tube to hit the surface of the sphere.

cgisoul 23-01-2012 05:31 PM

Yes you are right. What I did was to create a flat plan first, constraint it to the curvy shape, then extrude to give it volume.

cgisoul 23-01-2012 05:58 PM

2 Attachment(s)
I just attached what I was describing. The "muscles" lines he has on the chest and shoulders, I was thinking to use tubes shaped like to be put on his chest and around the body, by using background constraint. Similar to Crysis body suit.

Ended up sculpting instead in Zbrush. Applied displace map on his suit.

bruceoutdoors 05-03-2012 09:08 AM

Maya Membrane
 
I think I found what you're looking for

maya has a hidden feature called maya membrane that does what background constraint does, except that you need to set some settings. It's limitation is that it doesn't work for selected vertices.

http://mitchzais.blogspot.com/2011/0...-membrane.html

bullet1968 05-03-2012 09:24 AM

bruce, if this works you are a bloody legend....I will try this out forthwith.

cheers bullet

ctbram 05-03-2012 12:49 PM

I have been looking the this feature for a long time. In fact I was thinking of teaching myself the maya api to write the damn thing! I use it in modo all the time and have to shuffle file back and forth between modo and maya to use it. I will check it out and see if it works as well.

ctbram 05-03-2012 01:16 PM

Okay tried it out. It works but it's far more cumbersome then modo's background contraint. It's actually easier to import the model into modo, deform it and the ship it back to maya. (sigh). But it has some potential if some daring plugin writer wanted to put some thought into it (cough, looks in NextDesigns direction, cough).


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