Cage Deformer 3rd Party Plug-in for Lightwave 3D by 3rd Powers
What is Cage Deformer:
Cage Deformer is a 3rd party, commercial plug-in for Lightwave 3D. I have purchased a good hand-full of plugins from 3rd Powers and I find them all to be of exceptional quality.
Cage Deformer's main features:
- Allows one model (typically high density polygons) to be deformed by a low-polygon cage model.
- It has a timeline independent of Lightwave's standard animation timeline for animating the points of your cage model with various tools
- It offers a greater variety of deform options than you get with Lightwave's standard MetaLink node and FXMetaLink.
How I use it:
To me, Cage Deformer is invaluable for character rigging and animation in Lightwave 3D. I rarely use the cage animation tools in CageDeform Tool but they are nice to have when I find myself in a pinch. Most of the time, I deform my cages using a combination of Lightwave bones and deformation nodes.
How it is applied:
Cage Deformer is applied in two locations.
First you assign it to your cage model by selecting it and choosing the "CageDeform Add" button. This will open a small window where you assign the cage model and the destination model intended to be deformed (Reference Object). When you do this, it will create a null object named _Cage. If you plan on using Cage Deformer multiple times in your scene, you may want to rename this to something like _Cage Character.
This _Cage null will have the Cage Deformer plug-in applied to it. All of the important information for this plug-in such as animation via the CageDeform Tool is stored in this null. You should also see a golden representative of your cage model appear. If this golden model does not appear, it is a strong indicator that your cage model has too many polygons and you should simplify it. In addition to your golden cage model appearing, your original cage model will be mostly hidden by having it's visibility set to Vertices. If you want to change this, you can do so in the scene editor.
In the properties panel of this _Cage null, Open up the Cage Deformer plugin under the Appearance tab. Here are all of the options for choosing how much and what manner of smoothing is to be applied to your destination model. Also, very important is the name field. It is important to name your Cage Deformer instance; most especially if you plan on using more than one instance of Cage Deformer in your scene. Be sure to set the As option to Deformed to make it work. Honestly, I'm not sure what the Base option is for. I've never used it.
Next, go to your destination model you intend to deform and add Cage Deformer in your Modifier stack. I recommend applying it before subdivisions and turn off bones. The interface of this Modifier Stack plug-in only has one option; assigning the very important name you chose for your Cage Deformer group.
Finally, and optionally, you have the CageDeform Tool button that will pull up a fancy interface panel for using various tools to select portions of your cage and / or modify your cage. It is a rare event for me to use CageDeform Tool, I tend to use bones and displacement nodes to animate my cage model. But you can use any method you choose; Bullet, ClothFX, various plug-ins, it is up to you.
My Favorite Features:
Not only does Cage Deformer offer skin/shell style deformation based on your cage model, it also gives you the option of treating your cage as a volume. This can make a big difference in the resulting deformations as well as variable falloff values such as Inverse Distance, Inverse Distance ^ 2, Inverse Distance ^ 4 (up to ^ 64), Smoothing Distance, and restricting it's influence with a weight map. I find some of these settings invaluable and they are not all available in Lightwave's stock MetaLink node or FXMetaLink.
Quirks:
- Do not have 1-point polygons in your cage model; it will likely make Lightwave crash.
- Using 2-point polygons as deformers can sometimes cause twisting when the cage is a chain of 2-point polygons and they bend more than 90 degrees from their original orientation (or was that 180?). This makes sense of course as there is no information to tell the model where it should be aiming along the length of the 2-point polygon. I generally avoid using 2-point polygons unless I know they will not bend too far. A tube of 4 or more sides will give you much better result for deforming something like a pipe.
- For best results, make sure your cage model comes before your destination model to be deformed. In the Scene Editor, click on the long horizontal button near the top to re-order how scene items are displayed and choose "Item Sequence," this will display the items in order of how they are process when Lightwave goes to a new frame. Drag your cage model so it is above the destination deforming model.
- There appears to be an upper limit of how many polygons your cage model can have before it renders the plug-in unusable. It is intended to be used in very light polygon density models, so don't go too crazy.
- Cage Deformer can be slower than MetaLink and FXMetaLink, especially when using it in Volume mode, but the flexibility and improved deformations are well-worth it. Just keep it turned off by un-checking it's displacement stack instance until you are ready to bake your results.
- Sometimes Cage Deformer will cause Lightwave to crash when loading a scene that uses Cage Deformer if the scene was saved while the plug-in was active. I get in the habit of turning off all deformation stack instances of Cage Deformer before saving my scenes. If you do find that Lightwave is crashing while loading a scene, you can open your Lightwave scene file (*.lws) into a text editor like WordPad, find the instance of Cage Deformer and remove it by searching for the related text. You don't want to remove the Cage Deformer plug-in that is applied to the _Cage null. This holds all of the complex data including any custom animation you applied. But the Displacement instance of the Cage Deformer plug-in on your higher polygon model that simply identifies the name of the instance can be easily removed without losing any of your tedious work. It will look like this:
Plugin DisplacementHandler 7 3PS_CageDeformer
1.11
"name"
EndPlugin
The "name" may be different to whatever you named your Cage Deformer group. Remove the above lines of text as it appears in your scene file, save the scene file (to a new filename just to be safe), and then you can load it up and hopefully this will resolve your crashing-upon-loading issue.
Where to get it:
Purchase Cage Deformer from 3rd Powers
Visit the official Lightwave 3D site to get Lightwave!
Give me a tip (Thank you!)