Layout LOP - Plants Sublayer Deformation/Animation

[aracid]

 

Hey All,

I have a simple environment with plants placed using the layout LOP. See the attached image. The image attached is my stage.

To get plant motion, i.e., wind effects on the plants, I assume I need to create a SOP Create and then within that graph, use a LOP Import to import the stage with the plants. Then, I would unpack, deform the plants, etc.

Next, I would use the Sublayer LOP to compose the new animation with the plants onto the stage. This should retain the materials from the original geometry but deform using P from the Sublayer.

This only works for the ground. (I left it in there and just in the interest of debugging, I didn't apply wind but applied noise, which worked out in the end because it highlighted that the Sublayer is indeed sublayering the new P onto the ground but not the layout1/plant01, etc.)

As a test, I replicated this SOP Create, removed the deformer, and then applied one SOP Create (with deformers) onto the SOP Create (just stage run-through SOP Create and unpacked). This works as expected except I lose material bindings.

This issue isn't present when I just layer the SOP Create to create the deformation onto the SOP Create (which creates the base stage).

 

This leads me to think that something is up with my stage, and thinking perhaps even plant instances, even though I've changed the method to all the options, i.e., reference, instance, specialize, etc.

It's not that I think it's the instance's are broken but rather that the SOP Create isn't capable of overriding the data that exists on the layout composition,

perhaps because the hierarchy doesn't match or because the plants aren't un-instanced as I still see the prototype data in my stage,

which leads me to assume that there's some form of internal instancing happening or just that the composition arc that the stage has and the comp arc from the sop import don't match (with the exception of the grid.... which works :)) .

 

I'd love some suggestions on how to correctly set this up or what could be wrong.

Thanks in advance

 

 

 

 

Edited July 17 by aracid