The Soft
Modification tool and deformer lets you modify a surface
by smoothly pulling or pushing groups of vertices.
See also
What is soft modification? and
Use the Soft Modification Tool.
Soft Modification options window
- Falloff Radius
-
Determines the area of deformation by the soft modification
tool. The area defined by the radius is dependent on the Falloff
Mode and whether the Falloff Around Selection option
is turned on.
- Falloff Curve
-
Controls the weighting of the deformation within
the area defined by the Falloff Radius. The
default shape of the Falloff Curve specifies more
influence at the centre of the selection area and less influence
at the outer edges of the region of deformation. The shape of the Falloff Curve can
be manually adjusted depending on the desired results.
Falloff Mode
Determines how the deformation
will occur for the selected region.
- Volume
-
When the Falloff
Mode is set to Volume, the
soft modification is based on a 3D volume of a sphere that gets
positioned about the centre of the region of influence.
- Surface
-
When the Falloff
Mode is set to Surface,
the soft modification is based on a region that conforms to the
contours of the surface. Surface mode is useful when you want the
soft modification deformation to wrap on a surface. For example, you
can separate the upper lip from the bottom lip on a characters face
using the surface-based falloff mode.
- Preserve History
-
When Preserve History is
on, all nodes that the Soft Modification Tool creates
are maintained. If you want to animate the effect of the soft modification
deformer or modify deformation attributes later on, you’ll need
to turn on Preserve History to ensure
the deformation history is maintained.
When Preserve
History is off, the Soft Modification Tool attempts
to remove the deformation history and all additional nodes that
it creates. If you are using Soft Modification as a modeling tool,
and do not want modeling history, you should turn off Preserve
History.
NoteIn order to generate
the correct result, the
Soft Modification Tool can
only delete deformation history when the underlying shape does not
have existing history. If deformer history nodes are still created
even when
Preserve History is off, try
deleting history on the target shape and then try deforming it again.
See
Example 2: Soft modification without history.
- Mask Unselected
-
When Mask Unselected is
turned off all components are deformed. When Mask Unselected is
turned on only selected components are deformed.
Falloff Around Selection
Select
from the following options:
- on
-
The falloff is radial
around each selected vertex. This can produce a more natural falloff
effect, especially when the selected vertices form an arbitrary
shape.
- off
-
The falloff is spherical
around the center of the selection.
- Falloff Based On
-
The direction(s) along the X, Y, or Z axes
in which the deformation falloff curve is applied. By turning off
falloff along one or more directions, you can create various effects
(for example, ramps, edges).
- Color Feedback
-
When Color
Feedback is turned on the surface mesh is temporarily
shaded with a color ramp in the area influenced by the soft modification deformer.
The color ramp temporarily replaces the assigned shading material
whenever the soft modification manipulator is active.
Color
Feedback provides a visual indication of the region of
influence as well as the amount of influence and falloff within
the affected region. Areas that receive the most influence (based
on shape of the Falloff Curve) appear in yellow.
The color ramp blends to a darker orange/red as the influence of
the deformer diminishes. Regions that fall within the area of influence
but are not deformed appear as black. Regions outside of the Falloff
Radius appear as a gray color.
Color
Feedback appears on polygonal surfaces in
either wireframe or shaded modes. Color Feedback appears
on NURBS surfaces in shaded mode
only and is not supported for subdivision surfaces.
You turn the Color
Feedback display on or off using the setting in the Soft
Modification Tool Settings editor.
Notes
- Soft Modification works
like a deformer in that it controls a set of points (CVs, vertices)
with a varying degree of influence that you can specify.
- Soft Modification produces
a separate softMod node
to produce the transformation, which can be animated.
- You can control the effect of the soft
modification by adjusting the Soft Modification Options,
the soft modification manipulators, and the softMod node
attributes. Setting the tool options in the
Create Deformers > Soft Modification > menu
affects the next soft modification, not the current one. If you
want to adjust the current soft modification options you will need
to adjust the softMod node
attributes using the Attribute Editor.
- If the Mask Unselected and Falloff
Around Selection options are turned on simultaneously,
the selected vertices will move similar to a Move
Tool operation on the vertices. That is, only the selected
vertices will be moved, and no falloff will occur because of the
masking that occurs.
- The Soft Modification Tool is
similar to the
Modify > Transformation Tools > Proportional Modification Tool.
However, the Soft Modification Tool provides
history and more control (for example, over falloff and color feedback).
The Proportional Modification Tool only
works on components. The Soft Modification Tool works
on components, objects or multiple objects. The Proportional
Modification Tool only works on multiple NURBS surfaces.
The Soft Modification Tool works
on multiple surfaces of any surface type. The Soft
Modification Tool can be used with the
Edit Deformers > Edit Membership Tool.