3DSMax Morpher driving seperate Displacement maps for Characters faces?

[Infinite]

Does anyone know how to drive different displacement maps based on a Morpher modifier? depending on what Morph is at 100% then a linked displacement map would kick in on say a Displace Modifier above or something? or perhaps using the MR displacement slot in a material?

i.e.

Smile morph - would use a specific displacement map, when at 100%

Sad morph - would use a specific displacement map, when at 100%

..etc

Is this possible? I find relying on just the base geometry to do the work isn't enough.

[companioncube]

this is just off the top of my head, i will try it out later. but maybe you could in the displacement slot place a composite map and have all your different displacement maps in there, where you can also mask them off in the mask slot for each layer if you need to so the displacement only affects a certain area. then at the top of your objects modifer stack you could place an Attribute Holder and create a series of parameters like Master_Disp, Disp_01, Disp02 etc... with spinners or sliders then with the reaction manager or maybe through wiring you could control the output level of each map (0-1) and the strength of each Morph (0-100) with the correct spinner you created in the attribute holder. So basically when you animate the parameters in the attribute holder you will turn increase/decrease the displacement and morph togther.

there are proabably much better ways of doing this by people much smarter than me who know how to script etc. because the way i just explained, if you have a tone of morph targets and displacement maps its not going to be fun. i hope someone can give you a better answer, this is just an untested idea but should work in theory

[Infinite]

Hi Aj,

That's an ace suggestion. Thanks for taking the time to post something. Although it sounds pretty tricky to get my head around. I will see what I can do with that info : )

Thanks :)

[companioncube]

i try make an example file tomorrow if i have time, but i bought a load of clay today so i might be preocupied :)

[Infinite]

Wow, that would be really helpful, thanks.

Enjoy the clay :dance:

[Infinite]

Also related to this, how does someone go about handling self collision on models?

For example say if you have a character who crosses there legs, or is kneeling, or has arms folded. How to you allow for skin on skin contact? is there some kind of deformation modifier for this? for self collision? or some kind of skin morph setup that could work?

Or even skin contact on ground? for skin spreading on contact, say when a bum sits on a hard surface or when feet slightly squash on ground contact?

I used to do most of my work cleaning up meshes for still models in ZBrush but I am now trying to make a robust rig for a character that handles all this stuff. I am sure it is allot easier to do in XSI and Maya.

[moonjam]

Hi Lee,

I really like (the other) AJ's idea for creating an attribute holder, from which you can wire/script the spinner value to control the blending & strength of the displacement.

A much more crude solution would be the Morpher material. It's much more straightforward to set up, but has some major drawbacks when it comes to flexibility, displacement would have to be controlled in each material & I've just seen in the helpfile that it won't work with Mental Ray :(

Anyway, if you're interested here's a quick tesst of how it (might) work:

http://www.moonjam.com/CG/MorpherMat.zip

But I think the attribute holder is probably the best way to go.

[Infinite]

Hi Moonjam, thanks for the offer of help. I tried that file in 3DSMax2010 but couldn't open it?

[moonjam]

Ah - we're running 2011 - sorry :(

[gjpetch]

Also related to this, how does someone go about handling self collision on models?
I've used displace space warps or modifiers to create the kind of self collision you're talking about.
Using morphs to drive displacement maps can quickly get messy and complex in max, I'd suggest the same technique companioncube mentioned.
One additional technique: combine an expression disp map 50% with an inverted base/default displacement map and you'll be able to isolate the effect of that expression. That way you can combine multiple expressions at the same time using a composite map with it's layers set to overlay.