Changing order of construction history?

[Uniel]

Hello,

I'm sure this has been discussed before, but I haven't been able to find any answers to this question.

I'm very new to Maya and to this forum, and I'm evaluating the software, because of the cancellation of Softimage, which is the Software I use.

Say I've made a polygon model which I, when I'm happy with it, have deformed by bending it or a by a lattice and/or any other deformer. Later I realize that I need to do some re-modeling on the mesh. These changes will automatically end up after my deformers in history. Is there a way to keep or move the deformers in history to have them evaluated last.

Below is a very simplified Example:

1. This is how I do it in Softimage, we start with a cylinder (this represents the model I'm happy with):

2. Next I add a bend deformer to the cylinder, of course the bend isn't very nice, because there's not enough geometry to define it.

3. I add some edge loops (this would represent the re-modeling), but realize that the cylinder's shape hasn't improved much, because I added the edge loops after I applied the bend deformer.

4. This is the important step, and it's simply done by moving the "Bend Op" to the top of the stack. Now the bend is looking much nicer.

Surely the order of the construction history can be re-arranged in Maya? Please help.

Thank you!

[sharp3d]

Good question! C4D is like this. Maya's hypergraph eludes me (so far). 

[Uniel]

Ok, so I did some more investigation. Didn't find much, so I tried doing it on my own. I found out a not so straight forward way of doing this.

1. I start with a standard poly cylinder and add a Bend Deformer to it:

2. I add some edge loops using the Modeling Toolkit. As you see below the cylinder isn't bent, because the edge loops are added after I added the Bend Deformer, I would need to re-arrange the construction history to achieve this:

3. I access the All Inputs list by right-clicking the cylinder and pick it from the menu. This shows the construction history as a list. When I try to move the Bend deformer (by middle mouse button dragging) to the top of the list I'm not allowed to do this, it's not possible:

4. This is something I just tried out. When experimenting with this, it seemed possible to move deformers among other deformers in the list, so I tried adding a lattice deformer, I still couldn't move the bend deformer past the lattice in the list, so I tried adding another lattice. And what do you know, now I could move the bend deformer and place it between the lattices in the list (by middle mouse button dragging).

5. You can see that I successfully moved the bend deformer up in the list and the cylinder is updated in the viewport: 

6. After that done, I just selected the lattices in the viewport and deleted them giving the result that the bend deformer is at the top of the list. Now I know it can be done, but this can't seriously be the way to do it, can it?

If there's a better way to do this, please let me know.

Thanks. 🙂

[muzipcan]

if you did not delete your object history before bend deformer, yeap there is an easier way:))

[Uniel]

Hi Muzipcan,

Thanks for your reply. Since I'm new to Maya and this thread is all about changing the order of the object's history without deleting it, would you please explain a bit closer what you mean?

What I need is to be able to edit a mesh after I've added deformers to it, keeping the deformers last in the construction history.

It's not hard to come up with a workflow situation where this would be useful.

For example, say I've modeled a character onto which I've added a bunch of deformers (deformers that I want to keep so I can modify them if needed). Now the Art Director comes along and wants to change certain things on the mesh, which includes adding polygons, edges, etc on the character.

Now, instead of:

1. deleting the deformers

2. modifying the mesh

3. re-applying the deformers and tweak all the settings all over again

I could just:

1. modify the mesh

2. move the deformers last in history, or even better, keep them last to begin with

[muzipcan]

I wrote it for Cylinder... if a model... the only way I found, was your way..

Adding a lattice to the model and  in all inputs, move tweek up (under the lattice)  and than move the bend up..than delete lattice...

succesfull...

This is the only way, which you used..

thanks for that points...

note: after I replied, ı noticed.. you created two lattice,   to move bend up... you do not need create twice... just once.. after lattice just move tweek to up and than move the bend...

it is working well.. no problem..

[wjhamiltontrader]

I was wondering if you found more information about this, ideally a way to script this. I was able to repeat the steps manually and get the same result as you (where you can move a deformer above non-deformer history), but was unable to do this through scripting.

I used the cmds.reorderDeformers() command but it doesn't seem to reorder them in the same way as what happens when you do it manually. Manually it successfully gets the deformer above whatever modeling operations you did, but when scripting, the cmds.reorderDeformers command it doesn't seem to do so. Hopefully that makes sense. I can make a video showing what I mean if it doesn't.

[Uniel]

Hello,

Sorry for the late response. I haven't really found anything new regarding this. For my purposes I sometimes create a Mesh Reference found in the Bonus Tools (Bonus Tools > Edit > Duplicate as Mesh Reference).

To summarize my workflow:

1. Create your model that contains construction history.

2. Duplicate this as a Mesh Reference and apply your deformers to this.

3. If you want to edit your model you do this on the base model (from step 1) and the deformed reference object (from step 2) changes accordingly.

Note that if you create a new UV set on the base model after step 2, it does not seem not carry over to the Mesh Reference. Changes to existing UVs seem to carry over, though.

This probably doesn't help you with your scripting, I'm afraid. 😞