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View Full Version : Need Advice For Falling Papers

Jeffparadox
07-26-2006, 12:23 AM
I'm about to build a scene where camera is looking up, ascending, and hundreds of letter size pages are falling from the sky towards the camera.

I'd like them to have a natural feel, plus I need to be able to constrain the aim of the camera when some pages come in front of it, so that the camera can look at a page for a sec while it keeps falling, and then turn and look at another one. Or, if I could have some kind of control over a few of the pages, to animate them in front of the camera, without interrupting camera's linear +Y motion and those particular pages' "naturally falling from air" simulation, that would work sweet too.

I just want to have a direction with this shot before I start, so that I won't find myself in a total mess the second day. I'd like to hear any suggestion: Simple methods, complex ones, cheap ones, particles, fluids, Paint FX, plugins, cheats, composites, After Effects...

I'll probably have no more than a few days for this shot, maybe a week, so I'd like to hear everything before I decide what to invest in. No details necessary, just direction

Thanks for all of the suggestions, thanks much..
neuromancer1978
07-26-2006, 05:29 AM
I would say either Soft bodies or cloth. Personally I would use cloth simulation, and it really wouldn't be that hard to do because you are working with flat planes and not a shirt or pants that would eat up calculations.
But you would need Maya Unlimted, and if you don't then soft bodies would be ideal.
Jeffparadox
07-26-2006, 03:09 PM
neuromancer1978

Thanks a lot for your advice. I'll give cloth a test. I usually see cloth being not that natural compared to any other dynamics effects in maya, I looks even tricky for pros of FX. So I'll keep softbodies in mind too.
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