Pool Jumping Board Help

[JimPanse]

Hmmm... maybe you should put some bones into your board and animate it manually.
I thinks that's way easier and faster than dealing with dynamics.
When you are inexperiened in keyframe-animation get some reference videos at the bbc-motiongallery and do some rotoscoping.


I hope that helpes a bit.

here that link could be useful:
http://www.bbcmotiongallery.com/Customer/SearchResults.aspx?Id=6a2b8ac9-5b08-4289-b465-383b18d761b4


Cheers

Thorsten

[Felipe]

My first attempt to do something like this would be animating a bend deformer. Probably making a clip with the board going up and down and loop it. Then use another clip with the board in rest position and animate the weight between them.

Cheers,
Felipe

[GeneralLethal]

You could also try using a bend deformation and animate the angle value. ***EDIT: oops Felipe beat me to it.

[misterdi]

Hmmm, it's interesting stuff for rigidbody I believe.

Here is my tought:
1. I will create a control rig with rigidbody (not necessarily part of the jump board).
2. It will consist of 3 rigidbody, all passive, but one will change state to active (B)
3. I'll put the B rigidbody inbetween the 2 passive one (where I position 1 and -1 in y-axis, and connect B to both passive with spring (rigidbody constraint) with default restlength 1 but high stiffness value (500 or more).
4. I move B downward slightly to compress bottom spring and expand top spring. (It can be animated to simulate the first bend on jump board)
5. I'll animate the state of B from passive state to active state to trigger the bouncing.

Using the y position of B, I'll drive the value of a bend deformer accordingly maybe using link parameters.

The advantage of this approach, is when you need to tweak the stiffness of the jumpboard you can easily change the spring stiffness and spring damp values.
And it will settle nicely or you can tweak the result if you plot it. And a simple rig like this can be simulated real time (I hope).

This is a variant from one of my tutorial (even though it's written for Maya) in my website
http://misterdi.cgpot.com, I thinks it's the piano key.

Regards,

[Tak Tak]

Just keyframe animate. I'm sure you will save many many minutes when you do so :D
But with XSI bend deformer you woun't get nice result because it's not "normal" bend like 3ds max's. So, here is my simple "Linear bend" tutorial.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-23025806618091161&q=bend&pl=true

Audio level is very low, so kick it up when watching.(remember to log off if you have messenger open. Otherwise... :D

[RenisanceX]

rig it and hand animate :) .......l.more control...less pain ..predictable results

[mocaw]

Just keyframe animate. I'm sure you will save many many minutes when you do so :D
But with XSI bend deformer you woun't get nice result because it's not "normal" bend like 3ds max's. So, here is my simple "Linear bend" tutorial.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-23025806618091161&q=bend&pl=true

Audio level is very low, so kick it up when watching.(remember to log off if you have messenger open. Otherwise... :D

I wouldn't say that- it's just overly complicated for 80% of simple bending! :)

[SheepFactory]

definitely hand animate something like this.

[Tak Tak]

I wouldn't say that- it's just overly complicated for 80% of simple bending! :)
What you mean?

[mocaw]

What you mean?

I guess I just find it hard to bend some objects that should be easy to bend- such as a plank, and not have them get distorted too much. I'm sure I'm doing something "wrong" but with objects that are very thin in one dimesion over the others the twist and bend functions seem to go "wonkie" on me. In many other applications these tools aren't as flexable (no pun intended) but they are very intuitive/easy to use.

You can do some crazy things with the XSI bend tool though, like when you start animating it, that IMHO are much harder to pull off in other apps.

Still- I wish there as a linear, simple bend...for simple needs...for my simple brain.

I also can't seem to understand why it distorts "thin" objects so much (see image).

Try taking a box, divide it a bunch of times- and scale it to make a plank, then freeze the model so you've cleared everything- now try and add a bend to it. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but this object gets really screwed up (see second image).

[GeneralLethal]

Hi mocaw, the problem is not really with thin objects, but with objects who've been scaled. If you freeze your scaling before applying the bend operator, everything should work fine.

[Tak Tak]

Never scale object it self! If you do so then you have ALWAYS freaze scale!
It's easier if you scale on point level.

XSI bend works very well. Only problem is how bend deform when you want to animate it.

[mocaw]

But I have been freezing! I promise!

Ah Tak Tak! Yes for some reason if I scale in point mode this isn't a problem. Why is that any different for this deformer? I'm happy to have found out...but still scratching my head here.

And what is wrong with animating it? Most of the time just changing the offset and the radius works (as it should for this plank).

Edit: Whoops...I take it back! I guess you'd have to use shapes based on different bends...

[Tak Tak]

Are you sure that you have freazed SCALE? Not only Freaze or Freaze M under EDIT...

Edit: If you change Amplitude angle value, you should see bend affects from bottom to tip. Not linearly. I'm pointing that issue.

[mocaw]

Let all the other noobs learn from my mistake...no...I wasn't freezing the scale as well, for some reason I was thinking (instead of looking) that a general freeze would freeze the scale as well.


/\ This is my best ansi art illustration of the hat I'm wearing right now. Thanks though...now a bunch of XSI modeling mysteries have been solved...and it's worth the small cost to my ego!

And yes, moving the center or the offset in conjunction with changes in the amplitude setting will give us a very good diving board animation- man I owe you guys!
Thanks!

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