@Ryland Would this be possible also with distort nodes running through the batch, as opposed to deform mesh in action? So spit your UV out of action, use distort node on plate- duplicate that distort node and apply it to uv plate you’ve generated. Apply those UVs in action to warp, then spit those uv out as of action as well in your separate output- then back to distort nodes, again using distort on the uvs for the different section you want to work on, iteratively repeat that process on the parts you want to work on separately. You’d basically end up with two pipes of distort nodes, but one is just for reference when working on the uvs and the actual warping is occurring in the successive actions with uv maps that were warped by distort nodes. I could just totally be thinking about this wrong! It’s such a cool process you’re describing, just thinking about the different avenues it could lead to.
Yeah I imagine that would work. I stopped using the distort node when I found deform mesh so its been a few years. One thing that immediately comes to mind though is that you can’t duplicate link distort nodes so I can already see myself forgetting to duplicate and swap the distort node after every change.
I suspect that with enough user demand and enough focus from ADSK, a lot of these techniques could be combined into one or two easy enough to use and cutting edge uber tools, inside one Action - which would be ideal IMO.
GPM: That’s the funniest shit ever.
Awesome stuff. Thanks to both.
Re: using Deform mesh, which is seeming more viable to me by the day - I’m curious if there is a side effect similar to using ext bic’s. If you have a high-res surface and you subdivide it heavily, and particularly if you have several of these, the action files get very large very quickly saving all those points - so the saves become slow pretty quickly. Does something similar happen when you jack up the lattices really high in Deform?
Not that I’ve noticed particularly. Definitely not anywhere near as heavy as extended bicubics. The vertices don’t have tangents and can’t be independently tracked so I think there is just inherently a lot less going on.
Makes sense. It “feels lighter” than ext bics.
I don’t think it is as stable as bicubics. Especially when adding a planar track axis. I have lost mesh warps because it all just bugged out. So I got into the habit of saving batches. And actions. Copying and pasting from other actions I have a feeling it doesn’t particularly like 100% of the time.
I love deform mesh, but hate it when I want to modify the position/rotation/scale of a selected groups of vertices and it borks on me.
Also, using outside on has interesting use cases like creating a page-corner-curl effect from the 90s.
