CGTalk - Ponytail Problems

JorelLatraille

04-16-2007, 11:40 AM

hi people, I thought I would throw this problem I’m having on the table and see if anyone here could help me come up with a solution! http://courses.cgworkshops.com/images/smilies/redface.gif

I'm currently rigging this woman for a group project at uni and I’m having problems with her ponytail! Firstly we only have maya 8.0 complete at university so that means I cannot use hair dynamics so I am left with soft bodies. I have managed to create a ponytail using a tutorial out of cgtoolkit the art of rigging book1, but it seems to be behaving very erratically when the particles collide with the mesh when i move her or it doesnt seem to hang right, and I have sat and fiddled with the settings to try and get it right but to no avail! The other problem is the book doesn’t cover much on the settings to help control the ponytail. If anyone would like to look at my rig and see the problem for their selves I will upload it to my webspace and give link! I’m at uni tomorrow so hopefully I will be able to play around with it some more… not that the lecturers there will have a clue how to get round it lol… http://courses.cgworkshops.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

yenvalmar

04-17-2007, 01:46 AM

soft bodies SUCK for this kind of thing. you will be better off hand animating it. i did a lot of hair before the real hair system came out and let me tell you, you will regret the time in your life you are wasting once you get your hands on maya unlimited. this is really intended to be a helpfull message so i hope you read it that way. life is too short to mess with softbodies for this application. and even if you get it to work you will just be learning something thats already obsolete... why pay to do that..

i havent read this book so i dont know the workflow they recommend but if you MUST use hair with softbodies, make an IK spline skeleton, and make the IK spline the softbody. DONT MAKE THE GEO A SOFT BODY FOR GODS SAKE.

then, make another skeleton thats hand animated and make a 3rd skeleton that can be constrained between the dynamic one and the manually animated one, bind your mesh to this one. that way when the softbodies totally **** up you can just manually over ride it per frame. but seriously, dont even waste your time.

if i seem bitter its because i spent a long time getting softbodies to work halfway decent for a hair sim then as soon as i finished the job, maya hair came out. a job that took me 3 months could have literally taken 3 weeks. softbody is that bad vs. hair for this job.

JorelLatraille

04-17-2007, 11:24 AM

dude i am so greatful for your honesty, i spent half a day on it and was pulling out my hair! I will just get them to hand animate it! Cheers :thumbsup: :D

Posthaste

04-17-2007, 06:49 PM

i would just go with a dynamic sc (spline) curve joint chain. you can put more than one in if you need. all you do is create a SC joint chain, and convert the curve that controls the joint chain into a dynamic hair curve. this will make it contact with his back, and head. then parent the hair to the head and paint the influences and you are good to go. i would recommend practicing on a cylinder first and then translating it to your pony tail.

yenvalmar

04-17-2007, 10:18 PM

if you read closely to the post. otherwise i'd suggest the same.

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