Hi @r_gigante,

Not to worry! I understand!

Thanks for your help!

Andre

Hi @zipit,

I am somehow even more confused than before, lol. You want the geometry in the screenshot to be subdivided, right? And the geometry is somehow procedurally generated by a Xpresso rig?

I'm sorry if it made it more confusing!
The Xpresso just connects the userdata to the generator object. So the subdivisions are controlled by changing the object's number of segments.

I do not quite understand why you cannot just implement that choice of subdivision in that rig? Doing it after the fact seems incredible cumbersome because this is probably not a static polygon mesh, but some kind of generator object that your rig produces there.

That's correct! Which leads me to think that having a poly object in the first place is probably the best way.

I am also just seeing now that you are asking also for a unsubdiving feature in your first post, which is quite a can of worms for an arbitrary mesh. I would go for your LOD-thingy if you see there a solution, because it is probably the fastest solution for you.

Yes, that's what I currently testing. I agree as that being the best way to switch from different resolutions.
Hopefully, this will work.

Will keep you posted!

Thanks again!

Andre

Hi @Cairyn,

Does your setup react to the global Level of Detail controls?

I'm afraid not! It's all done by changing the number of segments for the objects.

If not, could you use a local LOD object with differently subdivided children?

I'm currently exploring this. I think I will be able to do that. Need to make sure it it does not break with the rest of setup :)
Will keep you posted!

Cheers!

Andre

Hi all,

Thank you very much for your help and apologies for the slow reply (been off a few days)!

You are absolutely right, my question is too broad.
Had a few days to think about other options and perhaps I'm overthinking this.

Nevertheless, I will share with you the specifics.

• Use of 3 basic (procedural) shapes: cube, tube and cylinder.
• Shapes require to be changed dynamically to meet artists needs and required shapes. For example, a tube should be able to bend meet a 0, 90 and 180 degrees angle, without losing volume, while still be able to be shaped with secondary controls.
• Animators will need to use the rig to make the changes to this shape with all necessary controls. This could be with user data sliders or splines.
• Poly Counts needs to change depending on the shot and render software (Unreal or Cinema)

So this is the current rig:

You have a dynamic change of shapes that supports all the parameters that you see in the image.
It does lack the secondary controls needed to shape it as we want and this is a big point as I currently can't create the nuances with Xpresso.

A possible solution would be to use three poly objects with different levels of subdivisions that are controlled with the same rig. Keep some elements procedural, as the bevel and bend deformers and connected all by Xpresso.
This would give us the benefit of accessing the point information and deformed it manually for animation as we need.

Also as @zipit said, this can also be a potential design, if rest fails

And last but not least, a Python Tag doesn't seem to be the right choice for this kind of tool in the first place, due to its constant execution. A script manager script, a Python Generator Object or a fitting plugin type would be much appropriate choices.

I understand that this is a design question and not API, so please delete if it's inappropriate.

Will come back with some results!

Thank you all again for your time!

Andre

Hi @Cairyn ,

Thank you very much for that!
Good to know from someone with more experience than myself.

We have a rig that already works with procedural objects, which is great. But at the moment if we want to have flexibility with it, I need to be able to control specific points/polygons of the objects to give animation the flexibility they need. I'm just trying to get a solution that takes aspects of both procedural and polygon objects, thus my question.

Have to think in a different way for now!

Thanks again!

Andre

Hi all,

I'm trying to understand how to add and remove edge loops from a polygon object, by using a slider in User Data and a Python Tag.

Like replicating the segments change with a Procedural Cube, for example.

Not completely sure how I would start this, to be honest.

Would be very grateful for any direction, please.

Thank you all in advance!

Andre

@m_magalhaes
Hi Manuel,

Thank you for giving me some time to check this out.
So after a bit of testing and changing the code to work with Cinema I cannot replicate the issue. As you mention it seems to be related to Pyblish.

I did find interesting that when running the code in Cinema without Pyblish you can't see the active frame running through the timeline, while you do see it when running through Pyblish. Perhaps that's the correlation with the crash.

I will close this as solve, for the fact that it does not crash in the Cinema context.

Thanks again!

Andre

Thank you Manuel! :)

I appreciate it!

Andre

Hi Manuel,

Apologies for this, as due to current circumstances I'm inundated in solving other issues.
Can we revisit this please?

Thank you in advance and apologies!

Andre

Hi @r_gigante,

Thanks for letting me know!

Andre