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Model Normal shift when setting keys or manipulating controller

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#1

Has anyone experienced the following bug or maybe has a workflow in preventing this from happening?

We have rigged a couple models with MGear 4.0.9 in Maya 2023 and we’re experiencing some visual glitches:

When manipulating the MGear controller the Normals of the mesh seem to be shifting. The actual Vertex/Polygon Normals are not changed but the Viewport seems to think so. This happens once after manipulating, it shifts back once the initial action is undo-ed or a keyframe is placed on the controller.

This to the point were it’s hiding crashes of geometry and we can no longer properly animate the model.

normalsGlitch
normalsGlitch1466×850 3.36 MB

I have done some testing and the same scene seems to work in Maya 2020 with the same version of Mgear, so this could also be a Maya 2023 bug.

I have not been able to reproduce the issue in Maya 2023 using default or other rigging solutions, so I am thinking it’s either a specific bug in Maya or a conflict in evaluation between Maya 2023 and MGear.

Thanks for the help!

#2

Another slightly more extreme case:

Animation
Animation824×670 295 KB

#3

Is it a visual or polygon glitch? Specifically, once it is in that extreme shape, if you were to duplicate the geometry, would the glitch still be there, frozen in the geo?

If it is polygons: Is it stable enough that you can leave it in glitch mode, and try turning the skinCluster envelope to 0 and 1, to see if it blends away? (To try and isolate if it is something like a joint flipping.)

If it is polygons, would you be willing to DM me the file to take a look?

If it’s visual, here are some things I suggested for someone else that was experiencing some unrelated viewport glitches:

  • In Windows → General Editors → Evaluation Toolkit, you can try unchecking “GPU Override” and “Include Controllers in Evaluation Graph”, and then restart Maya.
  • I don’t know anything about the “Advanced” options just below that. But they might be related. The screenshot shows default values for those advanced options. (default is both checked and “Idle Rebuild and Prepare for Manip”)
  • Try turning off Cached Playback, in case it is causing memory glitches.
  • Try resetting any Viewport 2.0 settings to default.

But those are just guesses for things to try.

#4

Hi,

Thank you for the quick reply! It was a visual bug for sure, I had compared all of the Normal attributes and the Normals weren’t actually changing.

Windows → General Editors → Evaluation Toolkit, you can try unchecking “GPU Override” and “Include Controllers in Evaluation Graph”, and then restart Maya.

This seems to have fixed the issue right away. I’ll do some more extensive testing but at first glance this seems to have solved it.

Thank you very much!

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