[Maya] Animating a flag with bones

Kratilim

Hi,

I had no idea where to put this, so I thought this would be the best place. I want to have an efficient way to animate a flag with bones so I can import the animation into a game enigine. The rigging I can do fine... But how would you solve the animation to be as realistic as possible? By hand isn't really an option.

Anyone have good tips/turorials/articles?

Thanks!

Edit: oh yes, and I'm a maya user.

Mark Dygert

It depends on the engine, but you can attach helper objects to a cloth object, simulate it and then skin your final flag to bones that are in the same position as the helper objects then snap the bones to the helpers as it animates. That way you can capture the simulation and you can hand key the bones if you need to, like get it back into a pose that loops.

arshlevon

yeah use rivits to do this, have done it many times for cloth sims.

make a cloth sim setup attach rivits to the surface.
once you set up your rivits, parent bones to them, then skin your low rez mesh to those bones.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLak2NIwKqM[/ame]

Kratilim

arshlevon wrote: »

yeah use rivits to do this, have done it many times for cloth sims.

make a cloth sim setup attach rivits to the surface.
once you set up your rivits, parent bones to them, then skin your low rez mesh to those bones.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLak2NIwKqM

Thanks for the tip! I'll try that.

throttlekitty

Yeah, thanks for the tip! I don't animate much, but it's nice to know these things.

Mark Dygert

I almost forgot about this, a while ago I wrote a detailed step by step tutorial on how to do this in 3dsmax.

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=66993