2.5Modifier Stack Order

The Solver collects its contributors from the whole stack, above and below itself, so for most modifiers the order does not change the result: Gravity above a material behaves exactly like the material above Gravity. A few positions do matter:

• Tnpix Garment goes at the bottom. It changes the vertex count, and every modifier above it must see the converted mesh.
• Tnpix Channel goes above Tnpix Garment. Paint is stored per vertex, so it must be painted on the mesh the simulation uses. A channel whose vertex count no longer matches the mesh is left untouched and reported.
• Tnpix Solver can sit anywhere; the top is recommended. The stack then reads bottom to top in the order things happen, the 3ds Max convention.
• Tnpix Cache and Tnpix Post Process go above the Solver. They work on the simulated result. When both are present, put Post Process above the Cache: its smoothing over time reads the neighbouring frames from the Cache file or the Solver's memory below it.
• Tnpix Threads goes directly above the Solver. It reads the cloth from the Solver's frames, not from the modifiers in between, and a cloth playing from a Tnpix Cache file below it grows no threads. Send the tubes to their own object when the modifiers above should work on the cloth alone, and cache that object to keep the threads.
• A painted Tnpix Soft Body or Tnpix Volume above a Tnpix Pin or Tnpix Preserve wins its area. Placed above the Pin or the Preserve on the same stack, a Soft Body or a Volume with a Channel lets go of the points it paints: they move with the flesh, or with the Volume, while the rest of the held region stays held, and a soft edge in its paint fades the hold out. Below the Pin or the Preserve it lets nothing go, and a Soft Body or Volume with no Channel lets nothing go wherever it is. On a Solver shared by several objects each object's paint lets go of its own points only.
• Render modifiers go above the simulation. TurboSmooth, Shell and similar modifiers smooth or thicken the simulated result and never feed back into it.