AdnSkin - maya - AdonisFX Docs (2024)

AdnSkin is a Maya deformer for fast, robust and easy-to-configure skin simulation for digital assets. Thanks to the combination of internal and external constraints, the deformer can produce dynamics that allow the skin mesh to realistically react to the deformations of internal tissues (e.g. muscles, fascia) over time.

The influence these constraints have on the simulated mesh can be freely modified by painting them via the AdonisFX Paint Tool or by uniformly regulating their influence via multipliers in the Attribute Editor. Besides the maps and multipliers there are many other parameters to regulate the skin's dynamics and behaviour to a wide array of options.

¶How To Use

The AdnSkin deformer is of great simplicity to set up and apply to a mesh within a Maya scene. The way this deformer works is by applying simulation on top of the skin mesh (simulated mesh) which will be directly coupled to its reference mesh (with deformation over time).

To create an AdnSkin deformer within a Maya scene, the following inputs must be provided:

Reference Mesh (R): Mesh to drive the simulation skin (e.g. fascia or combined muscles).
Skin Mesh (S): Mesh to apply the deformer onto.

The process to create an AdnSkin deformer is:

¶Attributes

¶Solver Attributes

Name	Type	Default	Animatable	Description
Enable	Boolean	True	✓	Flag to enable or disable the deformer computation.
Iterations	Integer	3	✓	Number of iterations that the solver will execute per simulation step. Greater values mean greater computational cost. Has a range of [1, 10]. Upper limit is soft, higher values can be used.
Material	Enumerator	Leather	✓	Solver stiffness presets per material. The materials are listed from lowest to highest stiffness. There are 7 different presets: Fat: 10³, Muscle: 5e³, Rubber: 10⁶, Tendon: 5e⁷, Leather: 10⁶, Wood: 6e⁹, Concrete: 2.5e¹⁰.
Stiffness Multiplier	Float	1.0	✓	Multiplier factor to scale up or down the material stiffness. Has a range of [0.0, 2.0]. Upper limit is soft, higher values can be used.

¶Time Attributes

Name	Type	Default	Animatable	Description
Preroll Start Time	Time	Current frame	✗	Sets the frame at which the preroll begins. The preroll ends at Start Time.
Start Time	Time	Current frame	✗	Determines the frame at which the simulation starts.
Current Time	Time	Current frame	✓	Current playback frame.

¶Scale Attributes

Name	Type	Default	Animatable	Description
Time Scale	Float	1.0	✓	Sets the scaling factor applied to the simulation time step. Has a range of [0.0, 2.0]. Upper limit is soft, higher values can be used.
Space Scale	Float	1.0	✓	Sets the scaling factor applied to the masses and/or the forces. AdonisFX interprets the scene units in meters. Because of that, to simulate external forces in the right scale, the Space Scale may need to be adjusted. For example, to apply Gravity with a value of 9.8 m/s^2^, the Space Scale should be set to 0.01. Has a range of [0.0, 2.0]. Upper limit is soft, higher values can be used.
Space Scale Mode	Enumerator	Masses + Forces	✓	Determines if the spatial scaling affects the masses, the forces, or both. The available options are: Masses: The Space Scale only affects masses. Forces: The Space Scale only affects forces. Masses + Forces: The Space Scale only affects masses and forces.

¶Gravity

Name	Type	Default	Animatable	Description
Gravity	Float	0.0	✓	Sets the magnitude of the gravity acceleration. Has a range of [0.0, 100.0]. Upper limit is soft, higher values can be used.
Gravity Direction	Float3	{0.0, -1.0, 0.0}	✓	Sets the direction of the gravity acceleration. Vectors introduced do not need to be normalized, but they will get normalized internally.

¶Advanced Settings

Stiffness Settings

Name	Type	Default	Animatable	Description
Use Custom Stiffness	Boolean	False	✓	Toggles the use of a custom stiffness value. If custom stiffness is used, Material and Stiffness Multiplier will be disabled and Stiffness will be used instead.
Stiffness	Float	10⁵	✓	Sets the custom stiffness value. Its value must be greater than 0.0.

Dynamic Properties

Name	Type	Default	Animatable	Description
Global Mass Multiplier	Float	1.0	✓	Sets the scaling factor applied to the mass of every point. Has a range of [0.0, 10.0]. Upper limit is soft, higher values can be used.
Global Damping Multiplier	Float	0.75	✓	Sets the scaling factor applied to the global damping of every point. Has a range of [0.0, 1.0]. Upper limit is soft, higher values can be used.
Inertia Damper	Float	0.0	✓	Sets the linear damping applied to the dynamics of every point. Has a range of [0.0, 1.0]. Upper limit is soft, higher values can be used.
Rest Length Multiplier	Float	1.0	✓	Sets the scaling factor applied to the edge lengths at rest. Has a range of [0.0, 2.0]. Upper limit is soft, higher values can be used.
Max Sliding Distance	Float	0.5	✗	Determines the size of the sliding area. It corresponds to the maximum distance to the closest point on the reference mesh computed on initialization. The higher this value is, the higher quality and the lower performance. Has a range of [0.0, 10.0]. Upper limit is soft, higher values can be used.
Compression Multiplier	Float	1.0	✓	Sets the scaling factor applied to the compression resistance of every point. Has a range of [0.0, 2.0]. Upper limit is soft, higher values can be used.
Stretching Multiplier	Float	1.0	✓	Sets the scaling factor applied to the stretching resistance of every point. Has a range of [0.0, 2.0]. Upper limit is soft, higher values can be used.
Attenuation Velocity Factor	Float	1.0	✓	Sets the weight of the attenuation applied to the velocities of the simulated vertices driven by the Attenuation Matrix. Has a range of [0.0, 1.0]. Upper limit is soft, higher values can be used.
Sliding Constraints Mode	Enumerator	Fast	✓	Defines the mode of execution for the sliding constraints. Quality is more accurate, recommended for final results. Fast provides higher performance, recommended for preview.

¶Debug Attributes

Name	Type	Default	Animatable	Description
Debug	Boolean	False	✓	Enable or Disable the debug functionalities in the viewport for the AdnSkin deformer.
Feature	Enumerator	Hard Constraints	✓	A list of debuggable features for this deformer. Hard Constraints: Draw Hard Constraints connections from the simulated mesh to the reference mesh. Soft Constraints: Draw Soft Constraints connections from the simulated mesh to the reference mesh. Slide Constraints: Draw Slide Constraints connections from the simulated mesh to the reference mesh.
Width Scale	Float	3.0	✓	Modifies the width of all lines.
Color	Color Picker		✓	Selects the line color from a color wheel. Its saturation can be modified using the slider.

¶Connectable Attributes

Name	Type	Default	Animatable	Description
Attenuation Matrix	Matrix	Identity	✓	Transformation matrix to drive the attenuation.
Reference Matrix	Mesh		✓	Mesh taken as reference to evaluate external constraints.

¶Attribute Editor Template

¶Paintable Weights

In order to provide more artistic control, some key parameters of the AdnSkin solver are exposed as paintable attributes in the deformer. The AdonisFX Paint Tool must be used to paint those parameters to ensure that the values satisfy the solver requirements.

Name	Default	Description
Hard Constraints	1.0	Weight to modulate the correction applied to the vertices to keep them at a constant transformation, local to the closest point on the reference mesh at initialization. Hard Constraint maps will force the geometry points to keep the original position. A low value of Hard Constraints may be desired to allow the skin to create wrinkles and sliding effect. Tip: In the example of a biped or quadruped creature, it is recommended to flood the geometry with a very low value 0.1, and then set a value of 1.0 to the edges of the skin to guarantee that it is properly attached to the target geometry. Tip: Smooth the borders by using the Smooth and Flood combination to make sure that there are no discontinuities in the weights map. This will help the simulation to not produce sharp differences in the dynamics of every vertex compared to its connected vertices.
Soft Constraints	0.0	Weight to modulate the correction applied to the vertices to keep them at a constant distance to the closest point on the reference mesh at initialization. Painting these constraint weights would allow the deformer to create a wrinkle effect when combined with hard and slide weights. Tip: In the example of a biped or quadruped creature, it is recommended to flood the geometry with a low value 0.2.
Slide Constraints	0.0	Weight to modulate the correction applied to the vertices to keep them at a constant distance to the reference mesh sliding along the reference surface. Tip: In the example of a biped or quadruped creature, it is recommended to set a value of 1.0 on the scapulas, shoulders, elbows and knees and an overall value of 0 on the rest of the body. Tip: Smooth the borders by using the Smooth and Flood combination to make sure that there are no discontinuities in the weights map. This will help the simulation to not produce sharp differences in the dynamics of every vertex compared to its connected vertices.
Compression Resistance	1.0	Force to correct the edge lengths if the current length is smaller than the rest length. A higher value represents higher correction. Tip: To optimize the painting of the weight, flood it to 1.0 as a starting point and tweak some areas later on. Tip: Reducing the value of the weight in some areas will contribute to reduce wrinkling effect.
Stretching Resistance	1.0	Force to correct the edge lengths if the current length is greater than the rest length. A higher value represents higher correction. Tip: To optimize the painting of the weight, flood it to 1.0 as a starting point and tweak some areas later on. Tip: Smooth the borders by using the Smooth and Flood combination to make sure that there are no discontinuities in the weights map. This will help the simulation to not produce sharp differences in the dynamics of every vertex compared to its connected vertices.
Global Damping	1.0	Set global damping per vertex in the simulated mesh. The greater the value per vertex is the more damping of velocities.
Max Sliding Multiplier	1.0	Determines the size of the sliding area per vertex. It corresponds to the maximum distance to the closest point on the reference mesh computed on initialization. Greater values will allow for larger sliding areas but will also increase the computational cost. Tip: For areas where sliding is not required paint to 0. Use values closer to 1 in areas where more sliding freedom should be prioritized.
Mass	1.0	Set individual mass values per vertex in the simulated mesh.

NOTE

Hard, Soft and Slide values are normalized for each vertex. Make sure to paint the values that you want to give priority to at the end in order to avoid the internal normalization override them in further strokes.

¶Debugger

In order to better visualize deformer constraints and attributes in the Maya viewport there is the option to enable the debugger, found in the dropdown menu labeled Debug in the Attribute Editor.

To enable the debugger the Debug checkbox must be marked. To select the specific feature you would like to visualize, choose it from the list provided in Features. The features that can be visualized with the debugger in the AdnSkin deformer are:

Hard Constraints: For each vertex, a line will be drawn from the simulated mesh vertex to the corresponding point on the reference mesh if its Hard Constraints weight is greater than 0.0.
Soft Constraints: For each vertex, a line will be drawn from the simulated mesh vertex to the corresponding point on the reference mesh if its Soft Constraints weight is greater than 0.0.
Slide Constraints: For each vertex, a line will be drawn from the simulated mesh vertex to the corresponding point on the reference mesh if its Slide Constraints weight is greater than 0.0.s