Endomorph Reduction Constraints Tutorial

The Endomorph Reduction Constraint parameters will be demonstrated in this tutorial with the help of Dex from Newtek's SIGGRAPH 2002 content. The Dex object can be found in the Sig_02/Objects/Endo_Sliders directory and it's full name is Dex_Endo.lwo. Since the object's Endomorphs are restricted to the head, I have removed everything below his neck for this tutorial.

Once the obect is loaded, you will again notice that it is a subdivision object and needs to be frozen in the same way that Nuthead was frozen in the previous tutorial. I again chose a Patch Division setting of 4 which results in Dex's head containing 48,688 polygons. This is probably an excessive number of polygons, but I chose to do this because the densely packed polygons enhance the following illustrations of the mesh reductions.

Now that the object is frozen, run qemLOSS3 and set the "Reduction Goal (Polygons)" to 8000. I also changed the "Surface Border Weight" to 10,000 to make sure the small dark polygons around the eyes were preserved. Click on the MORF tab and notice that the "Use Relative Morphs as Reduction Constraint" parameter is available but unselected. Leave it unselected for the first reduction run, so we can use the reduced object as a basis for comparison for the rest of the reductions. This results in a fairly consistent reduction of polygons throughout the entire object, as seen in the image below.

IMPORTANT NOTE when dealing with Endomorph reductions in qemLOSS3: The reduction process is usually left with one of the Endomorph positions being displayed in Modeler, rather than the base Endomorph position. I tried to force the qemLOSS3 plugin to select the base position before and/or after the reduction process, but there seems to be an oversight in the Lightwave SDK that doesn't allow me to select the base position (the plugin can select any of the morphed positions, but I could not figure out the proper encantation to select the base position). So you will definitely want to make sure the "(base)" position is being displayed before running qemLOSS3 again by choosing "(base)" from the M pull-down menu at the lower right corner of Modeler. This is very important, otherwise qemLOSS3 will assume the position being displayed is the base object, and it will perform the reduction as if that is the base object and all relative morphs will be added to that position.

Switch back to the original layer, and make sure the "(base)" Endomorph position is being displayed in the Modeler's viewports. Run qemLOSS3 again and choose the MORF tab. Enable the "Use Relative Morphs as Reduction Constraint" parameter, and leave all the multipliers at the default value of 100. Once you click on OK, the new reduction will show that the vertices in the areas of the Jaw, Mouth, and Eyes have not been reduced as much as they were in the previous reduction. That's because those are the areas that contain Endomorphs, and the length of those morph vectors were used along with the "Multiplier" value to increase the geometric error weight of those vertices. The image below also shows the amount of  reduction was increased in the forehead and hair (and other areas that can't be seen in the image) because those are the areas that were not constrained by Endomorphs.

Now if you decide the eyes need to display more of their expressive nature found in the original object, you will need to leave more of the original polygons around the brows and the eyelids. Switch back to the original object in layer 1, and once again make sure the base Endomorph position is being displayed in Modeler's viewports. Run qemLOSS3 again, and under the MORF tab select either the "Brows:Up_Both" or the "Brows"Down_Both"  Endomorph map. Since either of those maps assign Endomorph values to all of the eyebrow area, you only need to select one of those maps, you don't need to select all the maps that assign values to every eyebrow position. Now change the "Multiplier" for the selected map to 10,000 to really increase the geometric error weight in tht area. Also select the "Eyes:Blink_Both" Endomorph map, and set its multiplier to 10,000 as well. The following image shows that with these parameter changes, not much reduction takes place near the eyes, and more of the polygons had to be removed around the mouth and the jaws (realize in this image that his lock of hair is obscuring some of his left eye, so you can't see all the polygons that are actually there).

Once again I hope you can see that by using the Endomorph Reduction Constraint parameters, you can gain tremendous control over the reduction process. This concludes the tutorials for qemLOSS3, I hope you became familiar enough with its parameters that you feel comfortable in controlling the reduction process to suit your object's special needs. There is also a "Hints and Tips" page that will reinforce some of the ideas presened in these tutorials, and some information from other users about how they have used the various versions of the qemLOSS reduction plugins.