CC Sphere-like Movement?

[Greenlaw]

Ah! And it seems so obvious...now.

Excellent example Wes! Thanks for sharing it.

[synthsin75]

Yeah, I kicked myself for taking the...very scenic route first.

[Greenlaw]

In one of my early failures, I did something conceptionally similar but I clearly did not use enough segments to get a decent deformation. Mine looked so awful, I decided that was hopeless and I abandoned the approach.

Seeing how you made it work is...well, um...eye opening!

Thanks again for figuring this out and sharing your idea Wes.

[Greenlaw]

Hey Wes, can you try one thing for me: replace the vector iris with that bitmap one from the 'realistic' project. Are you seeing the same result?

At first it doesn't look like the image is being warped at all. On closer examination, I can see the warp is having an effect but it's not nearly as strong as with the vector layer. I'm guessing maybe the image layer's autogenerated mesh doesn't have enough segments for suitable deformation quality.

I'm going try a second custom mesh on just the 'iris' image layer, and have the big 'iris' mesh deform that.

I don't think Layer Binding the image layer matters, but will check other binding modes too.

[Greenlaw]

Aha! Adding a secondary mesh works. Even a very simple radial mesh (i.e., a 'sliced pie') works fine. The problem is with the invisible default mesh...I'm guessing the polygons make a 'zig-zag' pattern instead of a 'pie'. Will post a GIF in a few.

[Greenlaw]

Realistically, the iris texture should appear concave with a transparent convex surface but that's a whole other challenge. Also, the spec shouldn't move with the iris like that. You see this happen in cartoons all the time because...well...cartoons.

There's some 'tearing' that occurs when the second mesh goes off the edge. This happens in the original project too, but I think it can be corrected with tweaks to one mesh or both of them.

Here's the project for the above...

realistic.zip

[synthsin75]

Man, Moho really hates something I'm doing. I tried adding an image for an iris in my above file, but every time I try to open the image layer settings, Moho immediately crashes.

[WatchMotion]

Hey all, all I can say is wow, I'm really impressed with your gusto in solving for this. Much appreciated, I bet everyone else can benefit from this a lot too. Greenlaw, I think you can solve for the tearing by simply having the mesh extend beyond the bounds of the interior mesh - see screenshot attached. Obviously, you would just want to move in the denser parts of the outer mesh so the distortion is more like your previous one. Again thank you so much, Greenlaw and Synthsin, you both rock!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/v66vd2igbz2am ... M.png?dl=0

[synthsin75]

Always good to take another stab at an old problem, with the benefit of more experience. Thanks for reminding us to take another look.

[WatchMotion]

Hey one last question... how are you guys building your meshes? I tried building one with HS_Shape / Polygon and it looks like yours but isn't distorting much really...

[Greenlaw]

Just to be sure, are you deforming the 'spiderweb' in frame 1? For this to work, you need two keyframes for the shape: the undeformed 'rest' state in frame 0, and the deforming state in frame 1.

Also, are you deforming a vector layer or an image layer with the 'spiderweb'? If it's an image layer, it's hard to tell what's going on because the autogenerated mesh is invisible; in this case it's better to create your own mesh for the image layer, and then have have the larger 'spiderweb' mesh deform that.

The project I uploaded last has an example for the smaller mesh, which is basically a 'sliced pie' layout, but it could be improved by adding a few more slices and some concentric ring segments, like a smaller 'spiderweb'. This would not only deform more nicely, it could also prevent/minimize the tearing effect along the edges. (I haven't tried editing the shapes myself but I'm almost certain about this.)

If you're deforming a vector layer, you need to be sure the polygon layout is appropriate for the deformation you want.

If none of the above addresses the problem, can you post the project file so we can look at it?

[synthsin75]

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/h61 ... e.zip?dl=0

[Greenlaw]

That looks awesome, Wes! Can't wait to look at the file and see how you did this.