Cerbera

I don't suppose it's down to the tangent space of the normal map is it - some sort of local vs global space conflict maybe ? I am not expert enough in how these work to be sure, but it seems.... likely ? CBR

OK, my strategy for mirrorballing that shape would be to make a grid array of plane objects that you align to the first flat face on your object, then make it editable, connect the pieces into a single mesh, and do a couple of knife cuts along the edges, deleting the polys that remain outside those. If you use the workplane alignment functions you can actually create the plane and cloner pre-aligned to the face in question, which is helpful. Then you can extrude them by a set amount and add a bevel deformer on the parent group. Then you can mirror, symmetry or otherwise transform that plane so you get the other side for free. And then it's just rinse and repeat for every remaining side. I would expect to be able to get that done in about half an hour. This 1 face took about 5 minutes... You can add various effectors before you make the cloner editable if you want a bit more real world randomness in there for example, which will be important for the sparkles, as for the most effectiveness of those you will want every one of the pieces angled subtly differently from its neighbours - if you leave them all exactly planar (as I have done above for illustrative purposes) that very much reduces the effectiveness of the mirror ball look, which is why you mostly see that on spheres.... CBR

Ah yes - the old mirrorball dilemma - looks like it's gonna be so easy, and... isn't, if you're doing it right 🙂 I've built a few of the round ones in my time and every time have done it row-by-row then cap sections though you can at least use symmetry to halve the workload. It's not actually that much work if you do that - takes maybe half an hour ? If you want to cover that shape in uniformly regular pieces then you can't use its topology to generate that via any automatic methods because it is obviously not even enough. Unless you Zremesh it more evenly, in which case you might get something usable. So, excepting that, whatever solution you try has to be independent of that topology. We might think of the cloner next, which may be a possibility as far as starting points go, but very unlikely it will be a complete solution on its own. Of course with this base shape, there cannot be squares at the edges unless you want the jaggy outline, so those on the perimeter will have to be trimmed and therefor not square if you want contiguous tiled borders. Difficult to advise further without you being more specific about how you want to tackle those non-planar parts. If I had to do it for a client I would do it by hand, 100% manually so I could get each tile exactly the desired shape and position. I don't know what sort of density of tiles you need, but this is quite a simple shape with a fair amount of repetition, so this task might not be as painful as you think... CBR

No ! It isn't in the default interface and doesn't have a shortcut assigned either ! Mystery how you turned that off if you didn't get it from the Modes Menu... CBR

Ah OK - yeah same here - just checking you hadn't found some other use for them I was unaware of.... cheers. CBR

In what circumstances do you use them, may I enquire ? CBR

Yep, that was it - realised it almost immediately after I posted but then had skype call. That's under the Modes / Execution menu in 26. I hate those buttons - they reliably catch me out every few years 🙂 CBR

Ok, that is some weird shit right there ! The scene has become somehow broken such that no deformers work on anything. Create a new scene and see if it works there like it does for me. And if it does work, pop this one in the bin, and try and recall what you may have done in this scene that could have caused it to break ! CBR

Please put the version of Cinema you are using in your profile so that we know what functionality is available to you... Bend deformers are definitely the way to go here ! Nothing else gives you as much control over where bending happens and how much of it there is over time. To try and recreate that using dynamics is probably expecting too much of dynamics ! Mograph can be used, possibly in blend mode between 2 models, each with bend deformers set to +max strength and -max strength amounts, so it can interpolate between them across however many clones you make. Then you should be able to keyframe either of those bend deformers to get the sort of result you want. Adding a delay effector in either blend or (subtly used) spring modes on the cloner will help naturalise that motion. CBR

That's OK - I don't have to convince you, and maybe that tool just isn't optimised for the ways you want to work ! Fortunately there are myriad ways to model perfectly adequately without using Poly Pen at all, so just do whatever works for you I guess ! CBR

But also the most precise, because you place each point individually for the first poly. And of course if you are in R25+ if you don't like the default just change it using the presets system to whatever you'd prefer instead ! CBR

It is default because it the most useful mode for starting retopology, or anything that is best started with a single polygon, which is the primary use for PolyPen. CBR

It does work with a symmetry object and it does have projection features ! That's only the default if you go round the whole object click click click, and if you do, an ngon is actually the most helpful result you could want ! Think about it - how could it possibly know what you want the topology to be doing when the only input it has is the perimeter vertices !? The chances of it getting it as you want it are almost zero, so the ngon is there so you can just use the same polypen tool (or any other) to cut it up as you want, or you can do a simple inset and get a perfect perimeter loop ! But if the first 5 clicks you make define just a single polygon, which is the preferred way of using that mode, thereafter you just hold ctrl and drag edges off to create the rest of the shape. Like so many things in life, it's not the size of your weapon that counts, but how you use it in battle ! CBR

No, it's quite recent thing (R25 I wanna say ?) in response to a lot of user feedback that it wasn't always clear which tool was selected. Even if it is not particularly intuitive to remove it via the HUD settings, we can't deny that's the most logical place for it ! CBR

No ! That is meant to be there and the way we turn it off now IS the HUD settings ! CBR

You can have non-planar polys as long as you spell them right 😉 lols... I would say it is almost impossible to make anything interesting from 99 polys without some or even TOTAL non-planarity ! The lower density of polys you work with the more non-planarity is gonna happen, and this is the very lowest of the low ! CBR

Since S24 yes we can reproject with it !! CBR

Wow - I have the opposite experience; there is a never a single project where I don't use it ! One of the best, most helpful and flexible tools we have in my book ! Yes, that's fine ! Quad strip mode (edges) allows that exactly as specified ! But as @Igor pointed out, even easier to just click and drag out a whole strip of them in Quad Strip / poly mode. Once we factor in that having done this we can instantly pick up and adjust any component; point, edge or polygon without changing either tool or mode, and add the ability to extrude by holding control, and you have a fabulously useful tool before you even get to any of its 'special abilities'... for polygon by polygon work and especially retopo and for the tweaking / adjustment phase of meshes I honestly think there is nothing better... CBR

Yep - RS Object tag. CBR

Turn off Background under Overrrides. CBR

Those seams are such a tiny detail that I think you could probably get away with minimal displacement there without much compromise to the loops you need for animation - just make the body and leg loops slightly more even in distribution than they would ordinarily need to be. But I would try with bump or normal map first, to see how believable it looks, because obviously if you can do it without displacement then no compromise to your body loops is necessary at all. CBR

Do you have Cineversity by any chance ? There's a whole series by EJ on the subject there ! CBR

No indeed. Whilst Cinema does have this functionality intended (to work with shift modifier I am told) it's not quite working yet, but should be at some point. CBR

The cloner on the right does not have any effectors in its list. Drag the effectors you want in there manually. This happens when you don't have a cloner selected when you add the effector, or add a new cloner after adding effectors to the previous one. CBR

Yes, Disconnect would also do it, but I remain slightly confused about why. If we look at the problem mesh on the right there, there are actually borders along all the edges of the cube, so I am left wondering why Cloth was doing what it did there. Oh well, I'll put it down to quantum weirdness, and let it pass... CBR