PDA

View Full Version : Balloon help for upcoming short

Nikodemus
05-28-2003, 10:39 PM
hello CgTalkers :)
i am in need of some help for an upcoming short, i am through my drawings and story boarding, and music timing. i know need to begin 3d elements ! and for that i turn to everyone here

a large part of the short will be a helium balloon, now it is summer and i can dedicate time to this , but once school starts again im sunk, so i need to try and work as much as possible. So to cut time out of experimenting, does anyone here know a way to create a believable moving balloon it will need to be held in hand and also fly freely in the breeze. i did a search but all that turned up was stuff for maya i believe.. i am using 3dsmax5 and am not good enough yet to bridge the gap of processes between one package to another. I will look at my manuals again to try and figure things out but they are so confusing you know :shrug:
i did see a comment about using gravity in a negative value in the search. that might work for when it is being help but free flying would require correct gravity and wind system i imagine

any help would be greatly appreciated !
it is so exciting to free of school and after a bit of relaxing i am motivated again to work on my short :cool:

i posted here and not the animation forum cause i need max info really.. like i said i cant really cross platforms too easily :hmm:

thanks again i will keep reading and post back and keep everyone updated :wip:
Ls3D
05-29-2003, 01:31 AM
Forget gravity and wind,... just keyframe it like any other character in your scene.

That's my $.02

-Shea
www.Ls3D.com

:cool:
JayCMiller
05-29-2003, 03:47 AM
Nikodemus I reck'n you could creat a soft body dymanic using reactor to set up a system that will animate for you. don't know if you have the time but I would be interested in hearing your results using this method, or what ever you come up with.
grury
05-29-2003, 08:57 PM
I would probablly use the free Simcloth plugin. its straight forwars to set up and the results pretty good, guess u would have to use a negative gravity value and creat a wind space warp to make it move around, link the bottom vertex of the rope to the character hand and the balloon will fallow the character...

hope didnt make it too complicated..
Dave Black
05-29-2003, 09:35 PM
I tend to agree with Ls3D on some levels, as once you press the calculation button in a sim package, you lose 99% of your control.

My advice would be to use both keyframe driven animation, as well as physics-based animation depending on the shot. You can also slap a flex modifier, or some variation of sub-object weighted dynamics on the balloon depending on how much follow-through and secondary motion is needed.

Just some thoughts.

-3DZ

:D
Nikodemus
05-30-2003, 10:55 AM
well here is a quick test.. no animations yet ;) just a bit of a look .. nothing here is final more of a wip just to work out some things.. angles etc.. no colors, lighting, textutres are worked on.. sort of bare minimum animatics right now..

but uh.. here is a pic.. i do think i happen to see a balloon :applause:
http://web.utk.edu/~mkuzio/shortWIP.jpg
perhaps i will make a wip thread in that fourm once i get some rough animations worked out and more fluet camera angles and sequesnces actually into the computer and off the story boards.. i will mostlikely update this thread incase you are interested in taking a look later at the wip thread i will create

this is so exciting.. my first animated short !:wip: :applause: :cool:
JayCMiller
05-30-2003, 11:02 AM
that would be good Nikodemus, never know when you'll need a balloon set up:)
CGTalk Moderation
01-15-2006, 06:00 AM
This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.