what is the real importance of the CAGE button as opposed to just exporting the level 1 without it and applying the displacements on top of that?
i understand that it trys to match what is on the highest level but is it necessary?
I like that the cage button matches what the highest level . but is this the way y ou guys would go about doing it?
ive done tests both ways but just wanted to hear peoples opinions who havve used this as well and the negative and positive results or either or.
thanks
Hey Miguel -
The Cage button is to be used when you plan on turning your model into a subdivision surface in the external renderer. It drastically moves points in the model so that when you do convert it into a sub-d, the normal smoothing occurs and the model appears closer to the original.
The other method of using a morph target or importing your original base model is to maintain accuaracy on excisting models that you are applying the displacement to, such as in a pipeline where the character might already be rigged.
Hope this helps…
thanks meats… thats what i immagined but just wanted to make sure…
thanks for clarifying that.
it was nice hanging withh you the other day btw… finally
cheers.
problem is assuming the character will be rigged at level 1. the cage sometime moves the verts to an extreme poition that almost makes it impossible to rig because how would you know…what its gonna look like really? when i smooth it one time it looks great but rigginng with the cage on seems almost impossible…
The workflow goes like this -
Export the Cage obj.
In Maya, open the obj. and duplicate it once.
On one version, convert to Sub-d.
The other (non sub-d) version may be subdivided and rigged.
Use a wrap deformer on the rigged version to control the sub-d (which will have the displacement map). This is the only way to animate with a Maya sub-d, otherwise it is too slow. This way you can animate the non-sub-d geometry and then only turn on the render version when it is time…
The other way is to use a non-cage version as the wrap.