Maya Background Constraint - How? - Simply Maya User Community

# 1 23-01-2012 , 07:37 AM

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Maya Background Constraint - How?

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.

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# 2 23-01-2012 , 08:16 AM

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

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# 3 23-01-2012 , 09:43 AM

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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.

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# 4 23-01-2012 , 10:03 AM

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

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# 5 23-01-2012 , 10:14 AM

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be nice wouldnt it dave?

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# 6 23-01-2012 , 10:15 AM

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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.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 23-01-2012 at 10:24 AM.

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# 7 23-01-2012 , 10:32 AM

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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

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 23-01-2012 at 11:22 AM.

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# 8 23-01-2012 , 11:08 AM

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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 user added image

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

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# 9 23-01-2012 , 11:26 AM

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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.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

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# 10 23-01-2012 , 05:31 PM

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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.

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# 11 23-01-2012 , 05:58 PM

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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.

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Last edited by cgisoul; 23-01-2012 at 06:06 PM.

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# 12 05-03-2012 , 09:08 AM

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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.

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

Last edited by bruceoutdoors; 12-03-2012 at 02:53 AM.

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# 13 05-03-2012 , 09:24 AM

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

cheers bullet

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# 14 05-03-2012 , 12:49 PM

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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.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

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# 15 05-03-2012 , 01:16 PM

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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).

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

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