We are creating a physically based plug-in for Maya. It presently resides within a MPxDeformerNode derived class. Our technology takes the mesh/nurb vertices at a frame that the user has prescribed as the 'handover frame' (i.e. The point at which the animation switches from key framed to physically based) and recomputes their positions based upon scripted physical criteria; such as gravity, elasticity, damping, collision etc. By requesting the timeslider control we replace those vertices with our newly deformed items.
Our deformations is computed in a globally instantiated class. This holds information such as the state of the chosen Maya geometry at the prescribed 'handover' frame. So a question here is: Where is the appropriate place for this class to exist? Should it be a new node type, a global?
Tim Craig
HyperMatter Dynamics
Real-time Soft & Rigid body Dynamics API