A question about Cloth Behaviour

[Per-Anders]

Hi, how long is your animation? can you post a scene or an animation showing what's going on? Maybe it's getting out of the range of the particle field? Or perhaps it's just the natural turbulence in the cloths own wind force is dropping at that point?

[GruvDOne]

Hi, how long is your animation? can you post a scene or an animation showing what's going on? Maybe it's getting out of the range of the particle field? Or perhaps it's just the natural turbulence in the cloths own wind force is dropping at that point?

The animation is 6 seconds long I have attached a stripped down version of the file for your analysis.

Thanks for your assistance. :)

(I had to empty the cache to make the file a suitable size for U/L)

[GruvDOne]

hmm.. the more I look at this, the more becomes clear, and yet my frustration does not wane.

I noticed while looking at the animation from the side (I had set the viewer to hide the wind effector previously) that the flag is slowing because it is leaving the wind's radius of influence.

Now, I must determine the best way to keep the movement as it is but merely speed it up, so that it remains constant.

Ok, back to it

[GruvDOne]

OK.. wtf.... I am really displeased with the control set for cloth objects.

After discovering that the original issue I was having related to the flag leaving the wind's area of influence I tried making some adjustments to that scenario.

I first simply tried to reposition the wind and/or change the region of influence, but this just caused the flag to blow further before pushing itself outside the range of influence.

Ok, so maybe If I make an opposing wind effector to blow it back into the original wind effector and cause a little back and forth that way. This did not turn out as expected either.

So, I decided to give in and use the forces tab on the cloth tag. This is where things started to get ugly as a .5 adjustment to a setting to any one control causes a BIG change.

When I was using the Wind effector I was getting a nice smooth waving in the breeze kind of effect... now with the forces in play achieving that same nice smooth motion is inordinately more difficult than it realistically should be

Anyone have a suggestion I'm open. I think I will go back to the effector set-up. render at 60 fps and give myself some time remapping wiggle room in AE

[LucentDreams]

have you tried setting the range of influence shape to unlimited in the wind modifier?

[GruvDOne]

have you tried setting the range of influence shape to unlimited in the wind modifier?


yeah, I tried that, but that just makes go forever in that one direction, rather than a nice waving back and forth, and makes the cloth stretch like elastic (even though flexion, rubber and bounce have all been set to 0%)

It would be nice if Cinema wind behaved in a way more consistent with natural wind ;)

[Meteoro]

Hi Willie, Im not sure of the look you are after. The example is too short to get the idea.

Take a look at this file, its using the cloth's wind and has animated the z direction to make the flag wave.

Regards

[GruvDOne]

Hi Willie, Im not sure of the look you are after. The example is too short to get the idea.

Take a look at this file, its using the cloth's wind and has animated the z direction to make the flag wave.

Regards


Wow dude, that is pretty much perfect. What's even funnier is that your settings and mine were not that far apart, except my flexion was at 5% and yours was at 50%, and I had lower numbers on my wind direction but a higher number on my overall wind speed. I too had been experimenting with positive and negative Z values, nut I was going on a range from 2.5 to -2.5 with a wind speed of 20. It's almost as though I was thinking about it backward...

Now for the million dollar question... how did you know to do that? Cause the manual sure doesn't provide sufficient help. I really want to understand how you arrived at those settings.

I am also curious is there was a particular reason you used so many duplicate key frames as opposed to creating sequence loops? Is there a disadvantage to sequence loops with Cloth, or is it just your workflow?

Many thanks, I owe you one. :)

[jsls]

You dont need a modifier or effector, just fix your points and tweak the wind settings in the Forces tab, you can get a pretty realistic wind simulation just remember to keep the values relatively low.

[GruvDOne]

You dont need a modifier or effector, just fix your points and tweak the wind settings in the Forces tab, you can get a pretty realistic wind simulation just remember to keep the values relatively low.

Indeed, and ultimately I experimented with both techniques. The settings in the forces tab ultimately proved the best solution, though they are tricky to work with

[Multiman]

The wind effector doesnt include turbulence. C4D treats turbulence as a separate force. I tend to think of these things more a simulation of physics than of reality. Gravity doesnt include wind resistance either, for instance, because it doesnt know what context you are using it in.

[Meteoro]

Glad to be of help!

Wow dude, that is pretty much perfect. What's even funnier is that your settings and mine were not that far apart

I don't know if the setting are important. I was trying to reach the look tweaking settings in cloth and while doing that the idea of anim. z coord came up, so the settings keeped as that for no reason.


I really want to understand how you arrived at those settings.

The only idea I had was anim the z param. if the settings of cloth helped was just luck. :)


I am also curious is there was a particular reason you used so many duplicate key frames as opposed to creating sequence loops? Is there a disadvantage to sequence loops with Cloth, or is it just your workflow?


LOL, At the moment I'm learning Cinema 4D, so I don't even know what sequence loops are! :D.

Show us your work when is finished!

[Meteoro]

Double post, sorry

[GruvDOne]

LOL, At the moment I'm learning Cinema 4D, so I don't even know what sequence loops are! :D.


Ahh, they are a HUGE timesaver. Instead of setting 35 keys in this case, you could accomplish the same movement with only 3 keys.

Here's how you do it:

First: Set the first 3 keys to give your full range of motion.

Next: In the Timeline, click on your sequence and go to Sequence -> Adjust and your sequence, instead of stretching the entire length of the timeline will shrink to encompass only where you have keyframes.

Finally: In the AM with the sequence still selected, you can enter a number in the "Loops" field hat corresponds with the number of times you would like the action to repeat (in this case 13 loops was the magic number)

Viola! Fewer steps, same result :) Ultimately this can save you a ton of time. I have attached screenshots to further illustrate what I am talking about. :)

Cheers!

[Meteoro]

Nice feature, very handy.

Thanks for the minitut :).

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