Rigging a kite

shardy

I am trying to rig up a kite (kite surfing) in 3dsmax and I am wondering if someone can share some tips on the best way to do this.



Essentially the kite needs to be deformable from completely flat to wind-filled (rounded) while being connected down the line (left and right) to control bars, and then onto the characters waist.

I have tried a few different methods using IK's (One with a single chain of bones connected with one IK, another method with Independent IKs coming from the left to center, and another right to center, but they dont seem to be doing the trick...

Any one have some pointers? creating bone setups isnt my forte'!

Thanks

Mark Dygert

Use morph targets for the kite, to flatten it and inflate it. If you need more control over it you could add a FFD box modifier to it and animate the lattice points. If you want to ripple it you could add noise or ripple before adding FFD.

Is the person going to be twisting independently from the kite and you need the ropes to twist also? Or is it going to be a straight forward affair, when the kite turns so does the person?

For the rope I suggest using SplineIK here's how I would set it up.

• Create a lot of bones for the rope, probably 15-20 per side. Skin or skinwrap your rope to the bones. Link the control bar to the end of the bone chain.
• Turn on 3D snaps, set it to snap to pivots. Then create a spline while snapping it to the pivot points in the bones. Where you create a knot/vert is where a control point will be. You'll animate these control points, I'd say about 4-6 should get the job done, you definitely don't need a control point for every bone.
• In the spline go to vert mode, highlight them all, right click and set them to smooth.
• Click the first bone by your kite apply splineIK, click the last bone in the chain, then click the spline. If the control point boxes are too big or too small you can select the points, delete them, then click the spline and under spline IK control you can set new parameters and click create helpers. You'll want them set to "Link All in Hierarchy". It also created an IK cross if its too big or too small you can click it, go to the motion tab and change the "Goal size" or just disable it, hide it or ignore it.
• Now you animate the control points, they will be a little wild and can slide off the end of the chain so don't pull down on them too much, that's also why you want to link the control bar to the bones, they won't stretch like the spline/control points will. But it should give you some pretty good control over the whole thing.

I have some other wild ideas about using Reactor & Cloth but that could easily take up a bunch of time and be hard to control. But would be fun to mess around with if you had a bunch of time to kill.