Is it possible to use the aiCellNoise node as a Texture for the Texture Deformer? When I plug it in, it doesn't do anything but shows up correctly as texture if put into a color slot.
I don't want to displace, I want to deform it.
Does it show up in the viewport? It doesnt here... As far as I can tell, its a node that is passed to Arnold renderer, which needs to calculate it at render time to show something, its not a texture that maya can read unless there is a support inside maya for approximations, like the ai standard material. It wont work inside maya nodes to drive attributes, just inside the renderer in a shading network that MtoA translates. Since maya texture deformer deforms the mesh then send it to Arnold, and not something that Arnold does on render time, it wont work. Do you need to drive something else on top of the deformed mesh? Why can't you use displacement? Maybe you can use displacement and then use Arnold to bake the geometry sequence so you have the displaced geometry inside maya so you can drive whatever you want.