Soft Dynamics probem - any ideas?

[SplineGod]

Originally posted by Anon7
Hi all, I'm fairly new to lightwave so this could be my ignorance showing. I'm using LW 7.5 & I'm trying to animate a character with a jelly belly effect. I tried using worley points on the surface to get the jiggle effect. This works great untill I apply the bones / deformation to the mesh. Lightwave slows down to a crawl, when I move the controller or keyframe it takes about 10 seconds for each action. It's about impossible to do anything. I'm running an Athlon 1600 with a gig of DDR and a GeForce ti-4600 video card. I also tried the same thing using motion designer thinking there was something wrong with the plugin, but same thing. I've applied the displacement both before & after applying the bones & no diff. I rigged my character with ACS4 (great plug-in BTW!). I tried a different character rigged with ACS3 to no avail. I guess it must have something to do with the bones, but I'm clueless as to what. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance for any feedback :hmm:
You could easily add an extra bone or two to control the belly.
Use follower to give the bone some delay behind something else its following. :)

[Carm3D]

Look into the SpringyThing plugin on flay.com.

[Anon7]

Thanks Splinegod & Carm3d. The follower technique is something I hadn't learned about yet. I downloaded Springy & installed it. When I figure out how it works, I'll let you know how it worked for me. I noticed that there are'nt any tutorials or info out there (that I could find) on using these type of effects. I think it would really be a worth while subject for a tut-writer to cover. The subtle effects like this can really add that realism to an animation.
Thanks again guys.
-Anon7:)

[Carm3D]

Anon7,

The documentation sort of assumes you know how to use expressions. Do you know anything about expressions?

[Anon7]

k - that makes sense. Not with Lightwave. I'm a convert from 3DSmax. Back then all I did was run the "Bones Pro" plug for any jiggle effects. I just discovered LW a few months ago & was sold on it immedately. Man what a supieror app! Unfortunatley there is almost nothing intutitive about LW (probably because I referance it against what I already knew in max & maya). I bought the "Inside Lightwave 7" book by Dan Ablan. This book is the ultimate! I learned more in a few weeks than I would have in months on my own. Anyway, I haven't gotten to the expressions part of the book yet. I guess I better learn to walk before I run, eh? :)

[Carm3D]

Well in case you need a boost, this might help you..
The null object SpringThing needs to follow can't be parented. So you can use Expressions to tell it to follow.

With the null in question selected, go into the graph editor. Then click on the expressions tab. Make a new one, call it whatever you want, and the expression formula would look like this:

Daddy.ParentBone.wpos(Time).x

where "Daddy" is the name of the object of your character, and ParentBone is the name of the bone you want the null to follow.

Then click on the Null's Position.X channel in the upper-left corner of the graph editor and then choose "apply" to apply that expression to the null's x channel.

Now repeat the process for Y & Z. Your null will now stick like glue to ParentBone, or whatever you have called it.

If you get stuck again let me know.

[Anon7]

Ding! - On goes the light.
Thanks for the Expressions tip. I used the formula & it stuck like glue just like you said. Then I "SpringyThingy-ed" my null with the bone, & it followed. That was pretty exicting for a rank LW beginner like me. I haven't quite got a true jelly effect yet, but I'm working on it. I just got to experiment with the springy settings a little more. - Thanks for the enlightenment. :cool:

[Carm3D]

My pleasure :beer:

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