I have just submitted version 1.92 to the Asset Store, this doesnt bring much new but does see a complete reworking of the Undo system, this makes life a lot nicer when tweaking the modifiers, shapes, ffd lattices etc. I have also started a new modifier. This is a Collision Deform modifier which can be used to squeeze objects through others, or flatten objects against walls, or leave marks behind on surfaces. The system will eventually allow you to specify bulging and falloff amounts, and whether the deformation slowly or quickly returns.
Collision Deformer
This is the fith video on MegaShapes and shows the lofters Rule based complex clone Layer. This layer allows you to combine any number of objects together using simple rules such as start and end, filler, placed and regular rules. So with this layer you could easily build a wall with trees and gates mixed in and the odd house etc,
Rule Based Complex Clone
This is the forth video on MegaShapes and shows the lofters Complex Loft Layer. This layer allows multiple cross section splines to be used along a path to build a surface.
Complex Loft Layer
Another day another post. Today sees the third video in the MegaShapes introduction series, this time it is the Simple Loft Scatter layer which allows meshes to be scattered over a lofted surface. Also today a small update to MegaFiers was submitted to the asset store, this sees a bug fix in the Mega Copy Object system that meant copied morphed objects were not working quite right, this is now fixed, and also I have added collider support for the 2d Wave Mesh object which can be seen in the video below.
Scatter Loft Layer
Wave Mesh Collider
This is the second video on MegaShapes and shows the lofters Simple Clone Layer. This allows a mesh to be built from a start, middle and end mesh and be applied to a loft surface. This is useful for railings, or fence type objects.
Click the image below to see the video.
This is the first video to show the features of the upcoming MegaShapes system for Unity 3D. This system allows you to use shapes/splines to build meshes inside Unity. The system includes methods to turn splines to meshes and an advanced lofting system that is layer based to allow you to build complex meshes quickly and procedurally. Everything can be updated in realtime, and can be animated. If you alter a spline that is being used by a loft the loft will automatically update if required.
The loft system uses an advanced layer approach allowing you to mix different types of lofts into a single mesh. Upcoming videos will show the different types of loft layers, this video shows the simplest layer in the system which is a simple extrude of one spline along another line but even this layer can produce some very nice meshes or game levels.
Click the image below to see the video.
I have put the old MegaFiers Playroom demo up finally. Click the link below to try it, again not much to do but look around and again you will need a good system as went mad with post effects etc. There are a few modifiers running in the scene, balloons are deformed in various ways, bend used on the projector slide, noise on a ball and path deform for the train. Cameras fly around on Mega Shapes etc.
F1 to F4 changes camera modes, with mouse and WASDEC keys changing the position and direction, mouse wheel will zoom, F8 toggles dynamic curtains, and cursor keys will change the camera targets.
I have just submitted version 1.88 to the Asset store. This version sees major improvements to the FFD modifiers with up to 4 times speed increase as well as easier to use editing of the lattice points with position handles, size of handles and mirroring of the inputs. The FFD lattice will now fit around the current selection if there is one but if that is not desired you can select in the context menu to fit the lattice to the entire mesh.
The Copy Object system has been improved and you can now copy an object and all its children if you like via the GameObject menu options of Mega Copy Object or Mega Copy Hier, this makes creating copies of deformed objects a lot easier.
Other changes include morphs can now have channel values outside of 0 to 100 range, and rubber modifier allows for a another object to drive the effect. I have also added the beta of the Morph Link system which allows you to link morph channel percents to bone or object transforms, this makes things like muscle bulges very easy to do, you just add the component to an object and choose whether you want the morph driven from the rotation, position or scale and from which axis and choose the morph and channel to drive and that’s it, so if your animated character bends his elbow you can automatically have a bicep morph change, or setup a complete rig of controls to drive avatar systems etc. This is a work in progress so any ideas or suggestions please do share.
v1.88
Added an axis param to the Cylindrify modifier
CopyObject now copies MegaModifyObject params as well
FFD now has option for position handles instead of free handles for easier editing
FFD has a size option for handles
FFD has mirror x/y/z option to allow easier adjusting of lattice
Rubber modifier now has an option to pick a target transform to control the effect
Added color option to FFD Gizmo
Added undo for FFD lattice point move
Greatly improved performance of FFD modifiers
FFD will fit lattice to selection is present
Context menu item for fitting FFD to selection
Context menu item for fitting FFD to mesh
World Path Deform optimized
Copy Object no longer adds MegaModifyObject if not needed
Added Copy Object Hier to copy an object and all its children
Morph now supports values outside of 0 to 100 percent and respects Min and Max values
Beta of Morph Link system which allows morphs to be easily driven by other object positions or rotations so easy to drive a bicep muscle bulge from arm bone rotation for example
The sharp eyed may have noticed that there is now a simple forum added to the site so if you have any questions, suggestions, tips or anything to show off then please do use it. The link to the forum can be found on the left side bar.
Just done a few more tutorial videos, these cover Cylindrify, Noise and the powerful FFD set. The FFD set of modifiers has been rewritten and heavily optimized so now the FFD 4x4x4 runs 4 times faster for example, I have also added some editing tools such as mirror lattice point movements so editing shapes is easier, and added back in position handles. Other upcoming changes are improvements to the cyclindrify modifier and the Rubber modifier now allows you to pick which object to use to drive the simulation, this is handy for skinned meshes where the root node may not be the one with the mesh attached. More improvements and features are coming.
Click the image below to see the video.
This tutorial takes you through the features of the Bulge Modifier.
Click the image below to see the video.
This tutorial takes you through the features of the Stretch Modifier.
Click the image below to see the video.
This tutorial takes you through the features of the Bend Modifier.
Click the image below to see the video.
This tutorial shows you how you can attach objects of any kind to a MegaFiers deforming mesh in Unity3D. This means that it is now easy to attach objects such as other meshes, lights, particle systems to your deforming objects. You just need to use the helper system included in the latest release of MegaFiers.
Click the image below to see the video.
The latest version of MegaFiers v1.85 has just been submitted to the Asset Store this version brings two new beta modifiers in the dynamic water and the webcam displace modifiers. It also sees improvements to the Morph and Point Cache animation systems that now allow you to automatically sync the animations to the current playing Unity Animation clip. Some handy tools have also been added such as a Mesh Deep copy so you can create a new version of a mesh object and apply modifiers without it changing the original, and also a Copy Objects tool so if you have an object with a lot of modifiers on you can copy it using the new tool and have a totally separate entity, before the Unity mesh reference system would not allow you to do this. This will also be useful for users who have trouble with the prefab system and will allow them to work around duplicating an object in the scene with a function call.
Note, some files have been moved around in this update so if you get errors about duplicate classes remove the offending files from the MegaFier Test Scene/Scripts folder. You wont have any problems if it is a fresh import of the system into a new project etc.
I will be doing some videos to show off how to use the new features very soon.
v1.86
Added a public LoadFile() method to point cache editor to allow for files to be loaded via scripts.
Added a point cache instance script to allow for easy instancing of point cache objects without overheads of data storage.
Knot handles etc orientation bug fixed.
Physical UV generation works for shape meshes now.
Added linked update option to Morph Animator so can link moprh animation playback to current animation.
Added Play on Start option to Morph Animator.
Added beta version of dynamic Water modifier.
Added webcam version displacement modifier.
Added linked update option to Point Cache Animator so can link moprh animation playback to current animation.
Added Play on Start option to Point Cache Animator.
Added a Mega Copy Mesh so you can use a mesh with different modifiers on without altering the original mesh.
Check added to MegaShape DrawGizmo to limit number of segs used to display to avoid slowdown.
Number of channel Morph Anim helper supports increased to 20
Added MegaAttach system to allow objects to be linked to a point on a deforming objects surface.
Added a MegaCopyObject system to allow you to make copies of objects with ot without MegaFier components on that will work independently.
The MegaFlier Demo, click the image below to launch, Press H for help. Press Tab to lock the cursor so you can control the cameras, F1 to F4 changes the camera mode and cursor keys change the camera targets and the mouse will rotate the view in most modes. There isn’t much to do but look but it was a quick demo and is meant as a teaching aid not a full game demo. You will need a good system to run this with preferably Shader 3.0 support, it uses a few post process image effects and the particle system is quite hefty, so be warned.
The lighting in the demo is using the new Light Probe lighting with HDR and Tone mapping, and all the smoke trails etc are done with the new Shuriken particle system. The camera system is a custom system which allows for various transition modes, multiple targets and different styles of cameras. The demo currently has no MegaFier deformations as it meant as a blank canvas to be used to show what each modifier can do in turn in a series of video tutorials.
A little video showing the new demo scene for the upcoming MegaFier tutorial video series. All the models and artwork were done by Tony and coding by me. There will be a webplayer of this uploaded soon to play with.
Click the image below to see the video.
The final image before the little demo is uploaded 
It’s almost done, almost time to do a video or two.
A little teaser pic taken from the new demo scene Tony and I have put together that will be used in the upcoming MegaFiers tutorial video series that will highlight each modifier and each param. Click the image for a larger version.
First test of a floating rigid body system linked to the Dynamic Water modifier in MegaFiers for Unity. Works quite nicely but I think I can improve things, but the Dynamic water modifier has a method to get the water height for a given point and methods for adding forces to the water, so anyone can code their own interaction scripts for the system.
Click the image below to see the video.
This is a quick demo of the dynamic water modifier soon to be added to the MegaFiers mesh deformation and animation system for Unity. You can draw disturbances onto the water with the mouse or by finger gestures or any other kind of input, you just need to call a method and provide an x and y position and a force and the system will do the rest. You can control the damping of the system, the input forces and the overall scale of the effect, as well as defining the size of the simulation grid.
The system will work on any mesh and any shape but best results are obtained with a mesh that has been regularly gridded up. The system runs nicely with the grid in the system using 6ms to run on a single core of a 2.8Ghz CPU.
The system supports obstructions and these can be drawn onto a grid and the level of obstruction can be defined per grid element.
Soon to be added will be support for floating rigid bodies as well defining varying amounts of damping in different areas.
Click the image below to see the video.
Version 1.85 is getting close to release. This version will include the Webcam version of the displacement modifier and also the Beta version of the Dynamic Water system. I have also extended the Morph and Point Cache Animator systems so they can be told to link to the main Unity animation. So if you change the Unity animation clip playing the morph and point cache animations will automatically match, so now you don’t need to script any changes to get morphs and point caches playing back. You just need to create the clips as before and setup the timings and check the Linked Update box.
I have also added a Mega Copy Mesh menu item to the Game Object menu, this will allow you to duplicate a mesh in the scene and break the instance connection so you can add different modifiers to it and not have it change the original.
v1.85
Added a public LoadFile() method to point cache editor to allow for files to be loaded via scripts.
Added a point cache instance script to allow for easy instancing of point cache objects without overheads of data storage.
Knot handles etc orientation bug fixed.
Physical UV generation works for shape meshes now.
Added linked update option to Morph Animator so can link moprh animation playback to current animation.
Added Play on Start option to Morph Animator.
Added beta version of dynamic Water modifier.
Added webcam version displacement modifier.
Added linked update option to Point Cache Animator so can link moprh animation playback to current animation.
Added Play on Start option to Point Cache Animator.
Added a Mega Copy Mesh so you can use a mesh with different modifiers on without altering the original mesh.
I have updated the MegaFiers exporter for Maya to now also export the BlendShape animation data. This now allows Maya users to take full advantage of Mayas animation systems to build their BlendShape animations and quickly and easily get those into Unity.
Click the image below to see the video.
This is version of two of the Dynamic water modifier, the physics has been optimized and the simulation core improved to give more control and a nicer simulation. Obstacle support has been added and the system will support dynamic obstacles and wake generation.
Click the image below to see the video.
