Rigging a piece of paper - ideas?

[cpan]

don't have much experience with animation but... maybe it would be easyer with a thick cloth and then animate it with constraints and dynamics... just an idea :)

[mustique]

1.
If you need manual ctrl over the animation use nonlinear deformers like the bend deformer on the paper geometry and make custom attributes to control all deformer attr on one node.

2.
Also you can try softbodies ("duplicate make copy soft - hide nonsoft" option)
with springs ("wireframe - 2" options). Then you could animate the nonsoft (original) paper geometry and make the softbody copy follow affected by air and turbulance fields.
Be sure to play with soft body weight and spring stifffness attributes.

Best bet would be to combine both methods.

[Jarod]

hi yashu,
Thanks for the suggestion, I didn't think of using cloth. But I feel that I would like to have more control over the form of the paper. I'm a bit of a control freak sometimes!


hi mustique,
Thanks! great suggestion. I was orignally going to shy away from dynamics, but I had a bit of a play around and they work really well! I'm still planning to rely on manual animation mostly, but a hint of dynamics adds so much life to it.

Just one question, I haven't used softbody dynamics much before and I can't seem to find where the spring settings are?? I'm using maya 6.5...

[mustique]

I'm not on my machine now but in the create springs options the setting must be where a drop down menu is. Choose "wire" and set its "length" to 2. This way only neighboring springs will be connected with 2 wires and not every vertex to every other.

[janimatic]

hey!

i just did a butterfly tails animation with soft bodies on ik spline skeleton, it gives a lot of controls with a natural paper like fluid motion

PS :
this looks like a tutorial about it
http://animation.digitalmedianet.com/2003/08_aug/tutorials/softbody_tutorial.htm

[Jarod]

hey janimatic,

thank for the tute, I went through it and it was pretty good. But I was getting some acceptable results with the other method I was trying so I decided to run with that.


mustique,

hi again, I still can't find any springs settings, I think I must be stupid. Are they created by default when you create a softbody??? or is it something you add to help mantain the form of the geometry?

Here's a quick animation test I did to test out the rig.

paper animation test (quicktime 144kb) (http://www.jarodpak.com/forum/uploads/technical_tests/paper-test.mov)

p.s thanks everyone for all your help so far

[7pixels]

For a project last semester I rigged a book with a page that could turned while the character read from it. I used an IK_spline with clusters attached to controllers and a controller for the twist attribute. I created a custom shelf with the some pre-made page poses so the animator wouldn't have to work from scratch. The results were pretty convincing and no dynamics were involved, however since you are animating a falling paper perhaps a more complicated rig is necessary.

[mustique]

Hey! I checked it on my comp. Sorry, My fault... ıts called "wireframe" not wire.


Soft/Rigid Bodies >> create springs [] >> creation method >> wireframe


and its the "wire walk length" that has to be set to 2.

BTW the animation is not bad. Just maybe a bit too linear of a move IMHO.
Good luck.

[Jarod]

hey,

Yeah I agree the animation is pretty naff :), but it was just me mucking around. I would really need to study up on some reference material before I seriously attempt to animate the paper.

I'm about to try the springs thing now...

7pixels

hey! yeah I tried the whole cluster/ikspline setup, but didn't really find it too good for falling animation. I also plan to rely on deformers rather than dynamics, I just find it easier.

The pre-made poses is a good idea though, I also have a character picking up the paper etc.. so I might try that out. thanks!

[janimatic]

hey janimatic,
thank for the tute, I went through it and it was pretty good. But I was getting some acceptable results with the other method I was trying so I decided to run with that.

For those interested in soft body/spline ik here is an easier tutorial (juszt watch, no comment) from the excellent Lost Pencil tutors :
"Learn to create automatic secondary motion " at
http://www.lostpencil.com/free.html

But i agree this method is better when you need to anim / parent to a rig (ex: tails) which is not your case.
Maybe using multiple ik splines with ik handle on the center of the paper could do it?

yours

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