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A better way to animate this?

polycounter lvl 14
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mdeforge polycounter lvl 14
There has to be a better way to animate this that doesn't take a full day of work.

First, see the example image attached. Secondly, let me explain what it is your looking at.

That purple wireframe model is a tab that I'm pulling off an adhesive patch revealing the sticky part underneath which is dropping down onto the skin. Imagine the bottom part of that tab being pulled, while double bend deformers keep the top part attached to the stickyness until peeled away completely.

That green wireframe model is the patch itself. I ran a nCloth simulation on the patch which conformed it to the skin. Then I cleared the history on it, applied my bend modifiers, and then used blend shape to blend a flat version of the patch to the conformed skin patch. And now I'm stuck painting weights to make sure the parts of the patch still attached to the tab I'm pulling away don't conform until after that section is exposed.

If anyone is tracking with me, I'll be amazed. Thought I'd give explaining it a shot, lol.

I was thinking running an nCloth simulation with those tabs under it, but I don't think it would offer the same amount of control. It just takes FOREVER. Thoughts?

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  • Illusions
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    Illusions polycounter lvl 18
    A few things could make this easier:

    1) Unless the character is animated, you don't need to run an nCloth simulation to get a small patch to conform to the shape of the skin (or other object), you could always make the other object you want to conform to a "live" object by selecting the object, then clicking on the magnet icon (or in the menus Modify > Make Live).

    2) Instead of painting weights you can use blendshape inbetweens. Selecting the option box next to Blendshapes in the menus will open a window with the option for inbetweens. While regularly if you select more than one mesh when creating a blendshape Maya will make a slider for each one. With inbetweens on Maya will make one slider, which will blend in series between your original mesh, and the other meshes you selected.

    3) Wire deformers also might help (you can add deformers to wires too, that includes blendshapes).


    I'm not certain of exactly what you want to do, but the general idea comes across, which is why there are a few options I've listed.
  • mdeforge
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    mdeforge polycounter lvl 14
    Hey Illusions, thanks for replying. Hopefully this wall of text won't scare you off :D

    With Make Live, does that mean I have to create my shape during that time? I already have a whole mesh that I'm trying to conform to the arm. As far as I can tell, I can only make an object live and then create new geometry on it. Is there a way to conform existing geometry to the arm that I'm not understanding? If so, then this may be a step up from what I'm doing with nCloth.

    I'm not at work at the moment, so I'm going off an older version of the scene. This is also a different mesh from the picture I attached above, but still the same concept. I apologize for the poor FPS, Jing only records a few frames here and there: http://screencast.com/t/9V4aWpH8sJGY

    1) 0-4 seconds I'm moving the mesh into position.
    2) 5-7 seconds I'm peeling off the sticky backside of this bandage/patch mesh. This isn't how it's suppose to look though because it's before I've done most of the work. Notice how it's nCloth working here. The way I'm doing it now I am:

    a) Duplicating the original flat (pre-nCloth) mesh about 20 times.
    b) I then create a blend shape with 21 sliders that I will move down the line (blend 1 to 21), each going from 0 to 1, back to 0 when the next one is up. Kind of like this: http://screencast.com/t/I0k9dfgFBN.
    c) I THINK I can't do this "in between" business you mention because I need to paint the weights on each blend. Why? See step 3.

    3) What you're not seeing in this video is that I'm peeling away that sticky tab as the blend is happening, and the mesh is conforming to the skin where the tab is no longer. Imagine pulling the tab with your left hand and smoothing out the bandage as your doing it with your right. Get it?

    It takes a shit ton of time to do this, especially when I haver dozens of versions of that bandage to do. Your "in between" method got me excited, but I'm not sure how to get around not painting those weights. I paint those weights to line up with where the tab is currently being pulled away at.

    What was your line of thinking with wire deformers?
  • mdeforge
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    mdeforge polycounter lvl 14
    I got the in-between blended weights working. Brilliant suggestion! You've saved my coworker and I a few hours of time and patience :thumbup:

    Looking forward to any responses regarding my questions from the previous post. Sorry for the double post, just thought it would be a nice update.

    Steps A through C are now condensed due to your suggestion. However, I'm still curious to see if there is another way to simulate that tab pull that would get rid of painting weights altogether. Also, see my question abou Make Live.

    EDIT: Maybe the solution lies with soft/rigid bodies. I've never used them before, so I didn't really even know what that was until 5 minutes ago. Doing some research on it now.
  • Illusions
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    Illusions polycounter lvl 18
    Stradigos wrote: »
    With Make Live, does that mean I have to create my shape during that time? I already have a whole mesh that I'm trying to conform to the arm. As far as I can tell, I can only make an object live and then create new geometry on it. Is there a way to conform existing geometry to the arm that I'm not understanding? If so, then this may be a step up from what I'm doing with nCloth.

    In Maya 2009 at least, when an object is set to Live, you can snap things to it. So if you set your arm to be Live, you should be able to snap the vertices of whatever object you want to conform to it to the arm.
    What was your line of thinking with wire deformers?
    You could use a wire deformer in place of blendshapes to pull the tab away. One for basic control, or more for more control, but one should be enough for a basic peel-away. When making the curve/wire, make sure to have wireframe on shaded turned on. Hold down "v" to activate vertex snapping. Now place the CV points for your wire/curve down the center of the peel away snapping them to every Nth vertex (where N is whatever spacing you want. You could do every vertex, every other, every 5th, etc. just remember that the more you do the more control you'll have, but also the more you'll have to animate, which may or may not show in the final animation). Next make your wire deformer. Then go into wire deformer attributes and change the Dropoff Distance to something that suits your animation. Next to animate the wire you can use any deformers you want. If you want to hand control everything you can assign a cluster to each individual CV, and then animate/keyframe the clusters. Or you can create a blendshape or blendshape with inbetweens of the wire/curve. If you want to go really simple you can simply apply a non-linear bend deformer to the wire.

    If you want to get more complicated you could do what I mentioned earlier about the multiple wires, and instead of putting one down the middle, put one on two of the sides, and do a corner peel-away like a book page being turned.

    A note on wire deformers though. If you assign one to an object, you'll need to move the wire as a whole without moving the geometry, so if you make groups and move them for animation, make sure that your geometry is not in a group with its wire deformer otherwise you'll double up the animations (ie. if you put your geometry in a group with its wire deformer, and move the group X distance, you'll move the wire X distance which will also move the geometry X distance, which will then again be moved X distance by the group itself).

    Hope this is helpful and isn't too confusing.
    Stradigos wrote: »
    I got the in-between blended weights working. Brilliant suggestion! You've saved my coworker and I a few hours of time and patience :thumbup:

    Glad this worked out for you. :)
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