Simulating an Earthquake

[Night Hawk]

That's sort of easy "catafract", camera animation is the trick you need here:) , you can accomplish this effect either by using the compositing program "Shake" where you will find the tool for doing cool earthquack (as seen in my attachment), or you can do that manually and is that to create a camera on Maya and make it move quickly in a few frames. I remember that i've seen a plugin for an earthquack effect using the camera but i cant find the site.

[Hirni_NG]

Evening all. I have a question that I am hoping I can get opinions on. I need to simulate the motion of a tall building in an earthquake. The motion of the building will need to look as realistic as possible. I am looking for suggestions as to the best way to accomplish this. Any ideas? Some type of animated deformer on the building perhaps?

Here's hoping I can get your collective creative juices flowing...

Appreciatively yours,

Cat.

Uh, I m not sure how a building moves during an earthquake. Some reference footage would be kickass (never seen footage of something like that). But a simple very stiff spring system with very high damping may achieve this kind of effect, maybe a spline IK - spring setup usually used for tails. The spring system could drive the control points of a FFD Deformer, or some horizontal only skin weights.

Mmmh, sounds like an interesting problim actually...

[Venkman]

I would think the deformers would do the job. From some of the buildings I've seen on TLC and such, it almost looks like the building is hula dancing when the footage is viewed at high speed. It is crazy.

[catafract]

Thank you all. Night Hawk, I am comfortable with the animation of the camera and have seen a plug-in to accomplish this type of effect. What I was hoping for were some suggestions to animate the building. Thank you Hirni_NG...I may try the spring idea. Buildings do have a very strange motion during a quake but it depends on the type of waves the quake is transmitting to the building. There are some that will move the ground side to side and other waves that will go up and down. (The latter being the more destructive I believe but don't quote me) If anyone else has some suggestions for animating the building specifically I would appreciate it. Thanks all.

Cat

[Hirni_NG]

Thank you all. Night Hawk, I am comfortable with the animation of the camera and have seen a plug-in to accomplish this type of effect. What I was hoping for were some suggestions to animate the building. Thank you Hirni_NG...I may try the spring idea. Buildings do have a very strange motion during a quake but it depends on the type of waves the quake is transmitting to the building. There are some that will move the ground side to side and other waves that will go up and down. (The latter being the more destructive I believe but don't quote me) If anyone else has some suggestions for animating the building specifically I would appreciate it. Thanks all.

Cat

Actually on a second thought, an IK setup maybe sufficient because the dynamic properties of a building are very stiff. Having the joint that drives the movement of the top of the building mimic the movement of a basement joint, but dragging behind a certain amount of time (just 2 frames or so) using driven keys for example has pretty much the same effect as a very stiff spring simulation...just a thought that can be tested fast...

[catafract]

Thanks Hirni. That is an interesting suggestion and one that I hadn't thought of. I'll give it a try! Have a great day.

Cat

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