Pinning Regions with Lagoa Transform Constraint

 
 
 

You can use the Lagoa Transform Constraint to lock points in Lagoa effects to the positions of nulls. This is useful for pinning cloth, for example, like a flag on a flag pole.

Cloth deformation pinned to two nulls using Lagoa Transform Constraint

If you have a simple Lagoa effect that uses a single phase and material on a point cloud, you can pin regions using menu commands. For other cases, for example if you are using multiple phases, you can pin manually.

Note that to be constrained, points must have their Constrainable attribute activated. This is set in the corresponding Lagoa Emit or Lagoa Init compound.

Pinning to One or More Nulls Using Menu Commands

  1. Do one of the following:

    • If you want to pin a mesh that has been deformed directly, make sure that its Lagoa ICE tree is displayed in the ICE tree view.

    • If you want to pin a mesh that has been advected using Lagoa particles, select the point cloud or make sure that its Lagoa ICE tree is displayed in the ICE tree view.

  2. If desired, you can add one or more nulls to the selection now.

  3. Choose Particles After Emission Transform Constraint from the ICE toolbar.

  4. If no nulls were selected in step 2, pick one or more nulls to act as pins:

    • Use the left mouse button to add nulls.

    • Use the middle mouse button to remove nulls.

    • Right-click to end the picking session.

    A group containing the nulls is created automatically, called Lagoa_Transform_Constraints, and a Lagoa Transform Constraint compound is connected to the Phase node.

Pinning to a Group of Nulls Using Menu Commands

  1. Make sure that the desired ICE tree is open in the ICE tree view.

  2. Select a group of nulls in the scene. Make sure that nothing else is selected.

  3. Choose Particles After Emission Transform Constraint from the ICE toolbar.

Pinning Manually

  1. In the ICE tree view, display the tree you want to modify.

  2. Add a Lagoa Transform Constraint and connect it to a new Execute port of the phase that you want to pin.

  3. Use a Get Data node to get the null that you want to use as a pin, and connect its Out Name to the In Name Null port of the Lagoa Transform Constraint compound.

    If you want to use multiple nulls for the same phase, group them in the scene and connect the group instead. See Grouping Objects [Scene Elements].

Modifying Transform Constraints

After you have applied a Transform Constraint, you can modify its effect by:

  • Adjusting the settings in the Lagoa Transform Constraint compound.

  • Adjusting the nulls' Size.

  • Scaling the nulls.

  • Changing connections directly in the ICE tree.