robertjoosten / maya-curve-attract

Maya curve attract deformer

maya-curve-attract

Maya curve attract node will pull the vertices of the meshes towards the closest point on the curve based on the distance, parameter and falloff attributes. By default, the points are displayed along the normal of the vertex but this can be changed to use the vector of the vertex to the closest point on the curve using the useNormal attribute.

Installation

• Extract the content of the .rar file anywhere on disk.
• Build the plugin for a specific Maya version.
• Drag the curve-attract.mel file in Maya to permanently install the script.

Compiling

Building the plugin using cmake will place the plugin in the plug-ins folder with a maya version divider. This will ensure the plug-in is compatible with the launched version of Maya.

1. Open Terminal

cd <PATH_TO_MODULE>
mkdir build/<MAYA_VERSION>
cd build/<MAYA_VERSION>
cmake -A x64 -T v141 -DMAYA_VERSION=<MAYA_VERSION> ../../
cmake --build . --target install --config Release

Usage

Once the plug-in is build and loaded a new curveAttract node can be created by selecting the meshes and running the cmds.deformer(type="curveAttract") command.

After this the curve needs to be manually connected into the inputCurve attribute on the node.

The parameter ramp is used to generate multiplier values for the parameter of the closest point on the curve. This can come in handy to generate a zipper effect. The falloff ramp is used to generate multiplier values for the falloff allowing for a smoother transition.

As the dot product is used to calculate the distance, smoothing operations are in place to smooth vertices where no displacement is calculated because of the dot product. For this the smoothingStep and smoothingIterations attributes can be used.