Version History

• Add support for Maya 2025
• Drop support for Maya 2022

• Fix "Transfer BCS Setup" not scriptable in Maya batch mode

• Fix rare crash when deleting data points or using the Mirror Geometry tool while Maya is in 'parallel' evaluation mode.
• Add support for Maya 2024
• Drop support for Maya 2020

• Add support for Maya 2023
• Drop support for Maya 2019

• Fix missed falloff update in cached playback when a falloff is animated while a DP geometry is animated as well.

• Fix crash when bilateral DPs have no falloff set

• Add support for Maya 2022
• Drop support for Maya 2018

• Fix cached playback not working with animated BCS node
• Significantly speed up animated falloffs (applies to relative data points with no connected geometry and no unilateral tweaks)
• Fix missed DP updates when input geometry changes

• Add support for Maya 2020
• Drop support for Maya 2017

• New experimental feature: Dynamically color deformed geometry to show DP deformation per vertex, current per-vertex DP count, or total deformation. Show UI controls using "View -> Show Coloring Feature".
• Builds for Maya 2019

• Convert the BCS into a Maya module for easier installation and updating
• Compatibility with Maya 2018

• Fix: "Reset Data Points" not working correctly
• Show if DPs have deltas in the "Data Point Info" section
• Added '-he/-hasEdits' and '-tol/-tolerance' flags to the DPK_bcs command
• Small GUI fixes
• Compatibility with Maya 2017

• Compatibility with Maya 2016 Extension 2
• New menu item to create a new dataPoint using existing geometry
• New menu item to disconnect geometry from dataPoints without deleting the geometry

• Fix: Rare crash when moving a DP to a different position in weight space
• Added new "Display Smoothness" smoothing method to ToggleView tool
• Additions to MEL utilities in DPK_bcs_utils.mel (for scripting setup creation/management)

• The deformation algorithm is now multithreaded
• Performance improvements even in single threaded mode
• New: Transfer a BCS setup to different geometry
• Fix: Missed node updates in Maya 2016 'Parallel' evaluation mode
• Fix: Warning when creating DP geometry for deformed NURBS curves
• Fix: Creating DP geometry after some input objects have been deleted in multi-shape setups failed
• Fix: Missed node update when DP geometry was deleted while geometry was connected

• Compatibility with Maya 2016
• Fix: 'Bake Topology to BCS' did not handle locked attrs correctly
• Fix: (PaintDeform + RotateDeltas) Corrected links to online help

• New: Added 'Bake Topology to BCS' function to "Extras" menu
• New: DataPoint Snapshot images in GUI
• Fix: References sometimes producing errors upon loading
• Change: Prevent editing of referenced BCS setups (GUI-only, command still allows editing (at own risk))
• Scripting: More flag combinations for '-dpw' (e.g. with '-wsp1', '-side', ...)
• Scripting: Flag combinations for '-gw/-gdp/-gfo' with '-called'
• Scripting: Flag combination '-q -gwv -name -bi (1|0)'
• Scripting: DPK_bcs_utils.mel scripting helper procedures

• New: Option "Create Geometry for new DPs"
• Fix: Data Point Info being truncated in the GUI
• Fix: Deleting an instance does not completely delete its data (new DPs sometimes inherited the old data)
• Change: Creating instances now uses the same weight-selection logic as creating other dataPoints
• Scripting: Internal node-updates are issued much more often when using the 'DPK_bcs' command, making most of the 'DPK_bcs -edit -update' calls unnecessary.
• Fix: Crash when creating a new BCS node with at least one dataPoint in non-GUI session
• Small enhancements
• Docs: added "How the System Works" and "FAQs" and made a few changes in other chapters, so that the "old-docs" could be removed from the package

• Fix: Turning Freeze Input off sometimes caused other deformer nodes in Maya to slow down, even after reloading the scene. Only restarting Maya solved the slow down.
• Fix: The BCS node did not initialize correctly when loading a scene with a hidden BCS setup of NURBS objects.

• Fix: Moving dataPoints to new positions sometimes resulted in undefined behavior
• Fix (ToogleView): Negative translations resulted in syntax error
• Docs: Small fixes

• Compatibility fixes for the new Maya 2011 Qt-GUI on Windows and Linux
• You can now select the font to use for the lists (useful if the default font is too small in your localisation)

• Solved a UI bug where the BCS GUI didn't open under certain circumstances
• Solved wrong handling of relative unilateral tweak geometry
• Ensure weight names do not start with a number

• Loading the BCS plugin after sourcing the DPK_bcsUI.mel script resulted in unstable behavior of the GUI (e.g. "Error while parsing arguments.")

• Referencing a scene with a BCS setup several times into another now works correctly

New Features:

• New interpolation method "Inverse Arc" for creating arc-type movement with positions on both sides of a weight's zero value (e.g. on -1 and 1)

Other:

• Huge speed up of list updates in Linux (now similar to Windows version)
• In MirrorGeometry, warn the user in case the object to be mirrored is specified as symmetrical object

Bug Fixes:

• When deleting dataPoints, influenced absolute DPs weren't updated
• Undoing dataPoint deletion sometimes didn't restore deformation data of bilateral dataPoints
• Undoing a "Reset Data" didn't trigger an update of restored dataPoint data, making it seem the undo wasn't successful
• Fixed a small bug in "Reposition DPGs"

• Some changes for x64 compatibility
• Added "ToggleView Setup..." to bcsUI menus
• Solved a few tiny UI bugs

• Creating dataPoint geometry now works even in complex situations where the output geometry is used several times in the scene (e.g. in a "Toggle View" setup and at the same time for a "Mesh->Combine")
• The expand/collapse state of weights in the list is now preserved when they are reordered
• Neutral ("free", neither "edit" nor "view") geometry is now created correctly for multi-shape setups (only accessible through the DPK_bcs MEL command, but may influence TweakMixing of multi shape objects)

• Fixed the dataPoint deletion issue. Deleting dataPoints should now be stable even with extensive use of undo/redo and big deletion operations.

• The "Falloff Settings" area now updates its controls more reliably
• The bcsUI's lists now have the "view" popup menus on CTRL+right-click instead of middle-click for Linux compatibility
• Tweaked UI code of the following scripts to work better on Linux:
  • DPK_bcsUI
  • DPK_mirrorGeoUI.mel
  • DPK_paintDeform.mel
  • DPK_toggleViewSetup.mel
• The Attribute Editor template for the BCS node now works on Linux too
• Fixed error in ToggleView scriptNode on Linux
• Non-unique object names don't produce an error anymore in DPK_paintDeform.mel and DPK_rotateDeltasUI.mel
• A few small bug fixes and enhancements

New Features:

• New script for adding several hotkey commands to the Hotkey Editor: "DPK_registerHotkeys.mel"
• New script for creating "Toggle View" and "Toggle Smoothing" setups: "DPK_toggleViewSetup.mel"
• New "PaintDeform Marking Menu" for the "Paint Deform" tool
• Added menu item "Add to PaintDeform Marking Menu" to "Data Points" menu and popup menu for quickly adding dataPoints to the "PaintDeform Marking Menu"

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a small bug in paintDeform where errors occurred when the painted object's name wasn't unique in the scene
• Solved a problem where the falloff editor was drawn incorrectly in Maya 8.5

Other:

• Updated online help menu items

• Added deformation order option to "Create BCS Options" dialogue
• Solved a possible memory leak
• Solved a bug that could unpredictably crash Maya in different situations
• Several changes in the way the command handles undo/redo, which should make it much more stable
• Solved a bug where instances of the neutral shape were unstable under certain circumstances
• Solved a few tiny UI bugs

• Many thanks to Louis Vottero for providing a compiled plugin version:
  • Win: Maya 8.0

• Many thanks to Tieum, Phid and the people at Mac Guff for providing compiled plugin versions:
  • Linux: Maya 6.0.1 (works on Suse 9 and should on Redhat)
  • Linux: Maya 7.0 (works on Suse 9 and should on Redhat)
  • Win: Maya 6.0
  • Win: Maya 7.0

API:

• NURBS objects are now mirrored correctly
• Fixed a bug that slowed down other deformers (e.g. cluster) no matter whether the a bcs node was in the scene or not. Now, none of the other deformers is affected by the bcs. Note that this fix doesn't work in Maya 5.
• C++ code revised so that it compiles on linux too

UI:

• All user interfaces (bcs, mirrorGeo, rotateDeltas, paintDeform) should now be displayed correctly on linux

Other:

• RotateDeltas now remembers the rotation axis vector correctly

API:

• NONE - Please note that the plugin is still version 1.0.6, so no recompiling is required. The changes are just in the mel scripts.

Other:

• Thanks to the help of Zach Gray, there's now a plugin for windows Maya 7.0

UI:

• Added functions "Select Related DPs" and "Select Included DPs" (instead of "Select Data Points") to the middle-click weightList menu
• When more than one dataPoint is selected, the total number of selected dataPoints is shown in "Data Point Info"

API:

• DataPoints now need about 17 times less RAM
• Reduced size of saved Maya scene file for bilateral dataPoints
• In Maya 6.5 and above, warning and error messages of the API commands now contain the line numbers
• Minor error checking fix in the DPK_mirrorGeo command

Other:

• Fixed a bug that occurred when an unpositioned dataPoint was added to the tweakMix using the "Add Selected DataPoints" button

API:

• Fixed a bug where connections were lost or API errors occurred when changing weight configurations while some weights had outgoing connections
• Fixed the alias name bug in the actual C++ code (the fix for 1.0.4 was a MEL workaround)
• Fixed the bug in "Move DPGs to Selected WPGs" in the actual C++ code
• Added '-weightValueName' query flag to the DPK_bcs command. This is required for the new DPK_animUI script.
• Fixed a bug that sometimes lead to infinite calls of a certain function and slowed down Maya

API:

• NONE - Please note that the plugin is still version 1.0.2, so no recompiling is required. The changes are just in the mel scripts.

Other:

• Weight names should now be preserved even when user defined attrs are added to the bcs node.

API:

• NONE - Please note that the plugin is still version 1.0.2, so no recompiling is required. The changes are just in the mel scripts.

UI:

• Added options to show/hide the four panes
• Added a Marking Menu below the panes for the different pane configurations
• Added menu item "Online Help" to the Help menu

Other:

• Enhanced the tweakMix window with options for adding objects and dataPoints to the mix. Also, the position of a dataPoint is now shown in the popup help of the slider's label.
• Added a new modeling tool "Paint Deform" (see manual)
• Added a new modeling tool "Rotate Deltas" (see manual)
• Added the item "Rebuild DataPoint Name" to the Data Points menu (see manual)
• "Data Point Info" now shows the rounded position under "Pos:"
• The separation string is now used for the info in "Data Point Info"
• Fixed a bug where all wps of a weight were indirectly selected even when just a wpg of this weight was selected. Now, only the wps of the selected wpg are considered to be selected indirectly.
• Fixed a tiny bug where the tweakMix sliders had wrong ranges in some cases
• Fixed a bug in "Move DPGs to Selected WPGs"

Changes in the docs:

• Added the "Quick Start"
• Added docs for "Paint Deform" and "Rotate Deltas"
• Other minor corrections and additions

• Thanks to the help of Judd Simantov, there's now a plugin for windows Maya 6.0
• Added plugin compiled for Maya 6.5 (windows)
• Source changed slightly to be compatible with Maya 6.5
• Batch files added to compile for Maya 6.0 and 6.5 (windows)

• Source made a little more ISO C++ compliant
• Added .bat file (with readme) for compiling with C++ Toolkit 2003

• Initial release

• Solved problems that occurred on Linux when loading the BCS and MirrorGeometry, RotateDeltas, and/or PaintDeform together
• Solved the refresh issue of drop-down lists (e.g. the Weights and DataPoints menus) on Linux

• Compatibility fixes for XSI 7.5
• Compatibility fixes for 64-bit Windows and Linux versions

• Compatibility fixes for XSI 7.01

• Initial release