Aug 2011
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Aug 2011
Sep 2011

Hello everyone. It's been a while since I've been on the boards.  Heck, it's been a while since I've had to supply my own characters/rigs.  I ran into an issue when attempting to freeze transforms:

// Warning: line 0: Cannot freeze below transform L_Arm due to multiply-instanced child L_ArmShape

This is on a shape that was duplicated and reshaped multiple times as a proxy for a character.  It is also causing issues when I attempt to bind the separate meshes to a skeleton: the mirrors bits are moving regardless of where they are bound.

Any possible solutions for this issue?

Thanks,
Doug

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    Aug '11
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    Sep '11
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Welcome back.

Bad idea indeed. Or in fact you have a logical error, in form do and don't do at the same time. Now the real question is what are you really after when your are freezing (what is the service you think freeze does for you). I find people have mystified freezing to the utmost end. My advice to everybody is:

Do NOT FREEZE unless you have a MATHEMATICAL BENEFIT of doing so. This incidentally means unless you know what the mathematics behind freezing and the thing you do after freezing does is don't freeze.

Freeze is super simple stuff (its about as complex as addition in this example). imagine object B under transform A with point P (or many points P1, P2 ... PN actually but showing one is enough), see ASCII picture below.

       X

X ^ P X
^ | (2,5)
| B +->Y
A +->Y (1,9)
(0,0)

Now here A is in origin (world space) B is located in A's space at 1,9. NOTE these cord syses are NOT the pivot point, they are the origin of the object, the mathematical center where things are calculate from. Now the point P is measure relatively form B what freeze does is it moves B so it coincides with A and moves the position of each point P so they APPEAR to have not moved at all. Ala:

X P X
^ (3,14)
|
AB +->Y
(0,0) (0,0)

This works and does something useful for many things, and something destructive for others. Now your situation (something like this anyway does not matter if B and C are under different mothers) is:

       X                  X

X ^ P X ^ P X
^ | (2,5) | (2,5)
| B +->Y C +->Y
A +->Y (1,9) (1,28)
(0,0)

This does not work. Because the question is if i move B and C to a what number do i put to P so that it stays put. Remember P is the same number all over, its shared. This would work if P was not the same in both cases but since its instanced you would need P to be (3,14) and (3,33) at the same time which is not possible.

So either you don't instance the stuff and freeze OR you instance and don't freeze. Those are the options. So now is your question how to UNINSTANTIATE a shape? Check your duplicat options, then duplicat again without instancing and dlete the extra instance!

  • *maya separtes that form where the things are measured from to save time in calculation should you move the pivot, so instead of updating 3 * nim vertice values maya updates 3 values. It saves time and is more accurate.
1 month later

Sounds like your problem is because you are working with parented instances for your variations instead of unique copies. Its good in theory but sometimes you can get hang ups like this because the instances are still connected somehow, usually because of that pesky shape node that was mentioned in your error.

The solution to this problem is to delete your parent instance forcing your child instances to either sever connections to the parent nodes or generate their own; allowing you access not only to the shape nodes but the transforms. One thing to remember though is that you need to make another copy of that parent instance so you don't lose it freeing up your other pieces of geometry.

I usually find it more appropriate to use the duplicate input graph options when making variations that way the new object still has all the history of the original but none of the redundant connections of an instance.

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