Original Geometry

Displaying Original Geometry on deformed geometry (see Show Original Geometry, below)

Original Geometry in Maya refers to the basic state of a mesh before any deformation has been applied to it: a "start" or "rest" state of an object. You can find originalGeometry as an input array attribute in the geometryFilter class, which you can use to retrieve the rest/bind state of the geometry. Any deformer that requires a reference to the basic state of the deformed object has an originalGeometry attribute.

Think of Original Geometry like a time capsule of a geometry's pre-deformed state. The benefit to deformers is that original geometry gives them the capability to readjust to new geometry, letting you modify deformers without the need to delete, undo, and revert.

In earlier versions of Maya, before the concept of original geometry as an input to a deformer, deformers often had idiosyncratic behaviors that made them inaccessible and time-consuming to modify. An Original Geometry state lets you use a consistent approach to tackle a geometry's history and rest state.

Note: Original geometry existed before as shapeOrig, but this wasn't available to deformers.

Show Original Geometry

By default, the state of the Original Geometry on a deformed object geometry is hidden, but you can display it.

Note: Only geometry that has Component Tags and been deformed lets you access the original geometry state. See Assign Component Tags to geometry for information on how to add Component Tags to geometry.

To show Original Geometry in a scene:

1. Select the geometry in the viewer window.
2. In the Attribute Editor, go to the <geometryname>Orig tab, and in the Object Display widget, turn on the Intermediate Object option..

originalGeometry tools

There are tools you can use to work with Original Geometry, for example, the deformableShape command, which lets you query the deformation chain:

Synopsis: deformableShape [flags] [String...] Flags: -ch -chain

-cog -createOriginalGeometry

-ctw -createTweakNode

-foc -frontOfChain

-gci -groupTagComponentInjection

-lsi -localShapeInAttr

-lso -localShapeOutAttr

-nch -nodeChain

-och -outputPlugChain

-og -originalGeometry

-pch -plugChain

-tw -tweakNode

-wso -worldShapeOutAttr