Smooth continuous mesh between two intersecting objects

[dkrelina]

I have a scene with a box and a tube. Both objects have skin binding and simple controllers.

I'd like to animate the tube "emerging" from the box. See the animation:

https://streamable.com/jufeg

Front view in wireframe.

https://streamable.com/ss61u

I'd like to find a way to smooth the seam where the two objects intersect. Right now the intersection looks like this:

But I'd like to smooth the intersection so that it looks like this, similar to two liquid objects coming in contact with one another.

Similar to the surface tension effect.

What technique should I use to generate the continuous mesh? Fluid? Point cloud? Some other approach? What are my options for creating topologies that continuously recalculate based on the animation? Thanks!

[mspeer]

Hi!

Everything that's based on nodes can be used.

Booleans example (for use with polygon objects):

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/maya-modeling/boolean-hell/m-p/7353410/highlight/true#M17641

[dkrelina]

Thanks @mspeer!

I selected the two objects and did a Boolean. Here are my results with animation.

https://streamable.com/lxh78

Here are my inputs and topology.

It works ok, but it would be nice if the seam didn't "pop" as much. I tried smoothing the entire mesh and I'm getting some glitchy results.

https://streamable.com/ihucb

Here are the inputs and topology with smoothing.

When I saved the file and re-opened it, the shaders were broken.

Also, I'd like to find a way to Bevel the seam. By default the Boolean operation gives me this result at the seam.

But I would like it to have smoother falloff.

I have not yet tried Mainframe Bool.

To sum it up, here are my questions:

• How to create a Bevel on the seam?
• How to avoid broken shaders?
• How to avoid glitchy topology on the seam?
• Best approach for inputs?
• Is Mainframe Bool included by default in Maya 2017? Will it give me better results?

[mspeer]

Hi!

"Mainframe Bool included by default in Maya 2017? Will it give me better results?"

No, it's based on Maya Booleans.

I don't have the time to fully support you with this, but in summary.

- All smoothing in Maya (and Booleans) are based on geometry resolution (sometimes a higher and sometimes a lower resolution is better).

- If you would choose Nurbs there would not be such a limit, but of course other problems.

- You also might try other Deformers from the Deformers tab of the main menu.

[dkrelina · Accepted solution]

I went ahead and tried some new approaches to solve the glitching and seam, based on recommendations by @mspeer.

Here is what I did:

• Mesh Resolution - Experimented with changing mesh resolution to see if it would give smoother results.
• ShrinkWrap deformer - To compare results of a deformer to Boolean alone.
• Textures - Texture blending at the seam with the Boolean operation.

Mesh Resolution

This was my mesh resolution in my previous attempt.

I wanted to see if lower resolution would give smoother results, so I tried this.

Here are the resulting topologies after the Boolean and smoothing.

High

Low

And here is the resulting animation:

High

https://streamable.com/lxh78

Low

https://streamable.com/lby54

So which is better? There are two problems I'm trying to solve: 1) smooth movement and 2) beveled seam (surface tension effect).

1) Smooth Movement

High res approach looks better. The movement of the low res option is less desirable. It's a lot more jumpy and glitchy. I want it to move as smoothly as possible, like a fluid liquid surface.

2) Beveled Seam

Neither of these approaches seem to give me any control over the beveled seam. The Low Res solution does look a bit more soft, but when it moves, the triangulation becomes very obvious and doesn't work for me.

ShrinkWrap Deformer

I wanted to see if the issues could be solved instead using a deformer. I went through the deformer list and the only one that I found might work for me was the ShrinkWrap deformer.

So I made a second cube and wrapped it to the boolean.

Before wrapping

After wrapping

Here is the resulting animation:

https://streamable.com/xbabb

1) Smooth Movement

The results are pretty good. I can see a certain "voxel" effect as the geometry moves across the surface. Perhaps it would be smoother with more subdivisions.

2) Beveled Seam

I noticed that the ShrinkWrap effect has a falloff and inflation setting. I did not play with these very much, but perhaps they could give me some control over the beveling.

Here is the topology and inputs.

Clearly, I now have a new problem with the ShrinkWrap that I did not have before. The ShrinkWrap deformer does not allow for "undercuts", which I would need in this case, in order to get both the front side and back side of the arm that comes out of the box.

Textures

I did a quick experiment with textures to see how the two textures would blend after the Boolean operation.

Here are the objects with textures applied.

And here is the resulting animation.

https://streamable.com/zdeck

Ideally, I would like to find a way to control the transition from one texture to the other, using a smooth ramp or something to that effect.

In summary, here are my questions:

• Smooth Movement - How to create smoother movement when animating a Boolean union?
• Beveled Seam - How to control the softness of the beveling at the seam on the Boolean union?
• Deformers - What deformers should I consider looking at to solve the problem? (must allow for undercuts)
• Textures - When using a Boolean, is there any way to do a smooth blend of the textures two objects (other than in compositing)?
• Voxels/Particles - I would like to consider a voxel/particle approach. What tools in Maya should I look at?