Problem of the day: Storm

#41

that is very cool idea,
I was thinking of using group cycle to achived lightning animation, thanks.

i learn a lot in this thread.

:applause:
Loon

#42

Smoothing your mesh may not solve your problems. Try it and see what you get.

#43

Brian, You are correct, I’ll do some test later on…

Loon

#44

See two posts down…

#45

Good luck Ian, I’ve try on the constrain geometry with various of setting, but still could not get a smooth movement… may be i’m not on the right direction…

Loon

#46

Well, I can get it going smoothly over the terrain with no rotation, or the other way around… but not both.

XP won’t see the deformed position…

So, I guess there is no perfect solution… Some part of it will have to be manually keyframed… or… is there something up someones sleeve? —Like psunami…
Ian

#47

I’m thinking the same thing… or may be Brian is hiding something to suprise all of us…:twisted:

Loon

#48

Just thought I’d add a little tribute to Rodeo :slight_smile:

http://www.geocities.com/aziz_cg/EIAStest/index.html

#49

Hah!

Uwe would be proud!

Great stuff AzOne :slight_smile:
Ian

#50

Aziz, that is realy nice.

but i want more, more teapot…

:slight_smile:

#51

Hey guys,

Lets try to summarize what we’ve tried.

  1. We’ve used runwave to accomplish a pretty nice looking rolling sea. I2M also works to produce a nice looking ocean as well.

  2. Geometry constraints are effective to constraint the boat to the sea, but the deforming geometry causes the constraint system to jump between polys producing a stuttering effect. Increasing the mesh resolution helps, but does not resolve the issue.

  3. Image2Mesh deformations provide the smoothest animated solution, eliminating the stuttering problem, but causes the geometry of the boat to deform rather than remaining rigid.

  4. I’ve tried the I2M solution with a cube acting as a animated null along the wave’s surface and then constraining the boat to the cube. Position and rotation constraints are ineffective because they lock onto the cube’s pivot point along the animated path, which is not deformed, instead of the cube’s deformed position. I’ve attempted a normal and geometry constraint to the deformed cube for the boat, but that’s proving troublesome. I’m still investigating.

  5. Xpressionist will not see the deformed position rather it sees the object’s pivot point along the path which is not deformed.

  6. Plugin support is becoming obviously necessary for this solution, however, I’m not giving up yet. :slight_smile: Psunami and now the upcoming Rodeo appear to offer the best solutions.

From this though, there are a number of things I would like to suggest to Matt Hoffman at EITG.

  1. Some sort of averaging system for geometry constraints would be useful. The stuttering effect is limiting the use of the geometry constraint system on deforming/animated geometry. The mesh resolution would have to be so high to get a smooth motion that it becomes counter productive. If EI were a nurbs/spline based program, geometry constraints would probably be the perfect answer.

  2. Deformations, both I2M and EI’s standard deformations, should have the option to deform the geometry mesh or their pivot point/location in world space.

  3. Deformations should be capable of being applied to an object’s bezier motion path. It would be nice to be able to animate an object on a straight line then apply a wave deformer to the path, thus changing the entire animation.

The last suggestion prompted a potential solution to our problem, though it involves another plugin. Northern Light’s Pathfinder permits geometric entities like splines or wires from EIM or FormZ within animator to act as motion paths for objects within animator. Deform the entity, deform the potential motion path. But of course at this point, if you’re going to purchase a plugin, I’d just spring for Psunami.

Any more ideas guys?

#52

Sometimes its really easy to exchange the definition of displacement and deformation when they are really two different things.

Displacement is the process utilizing a texture input, whether procedural or an image, to manipulate and move the actual rendered faces. It affects the object’s mesh. Image2Mesh actually uses a displacement technique to change the surface geometry based off a gray scale value. Sometimes we like to say the geometry is deforming because of this, but in reality its displacing.

A deformation however is usually a method to modify an objects geometry mesh based on mathmatical equations. EIAS creates a cubic deformation region around an object and all geometry within that region is reshaped based off the selected type of deformation. Sinewaves, beziers, bones, etc.

In either case, the object’s pivot point location is not affected. If image2mesh were to modify the object’s pivot point in space, rather than displacing the geometry, we could have a solution on our hands. When using deformers and XP, XP is still reading the object’s pivot location and in the case of ocean swells, it wont provide a solution. The geometry constraint is the only method to have an object travel and orient along a surface, but thanks to shifting of faces, the object tends to pop. Some method of averaging faces for the geometry constraint would be cool.

This is why I would l like a method of applying deformation regions to an objects actual motion path. I think it would provide for some very interesting capabilities. If anyone would like to try my experiment by using splines from an outside modeling program and pathfinder, please do. Perhaps a deformation region on this spline would allow us to deform the motion path and then let pathfinder move the object along on the newly deformed path.

#53

Well… I’ve almost found a solution that works if you own pathfinder.

Utilizing a technique I’ve learned in Maya, I’ve been able to get EI to recreate a lovely waving ocean with an object following the contours of the waves perfectly without any popping or stuttering from a geometry constraint.

The Maya technique is to project a curve on surface and then tranform that surface into a softbody or simply deform the surface. Maya can use curves as motionpaths and the result is simple and easy.

Since we don’t have nurbs or softbodies, the EI solution is a little make shift, but it isn’t that difficult. Unfortunately it does require at least 1 plugin and it helps having another freebee.

My solution was to use Path2Line, a free plugin from the Igors, to convert a null’s motion path into a line entity. This line entity is then exported out and reimported into EI as a fact model. An ubershape plane is used as the ocean’s surface and deformed with Runwave. Ultimately, pathfinder is required to move the boat or object to the curve that is inheriting the uberplane’s runwave deformation. The end result is a perfect match from curve to wave. Pathfinder also permits auto alignment to the curve and since its deformed, it causes the object on the curve to pitch properly.

However, there is a problem. Since we are utilizing plugins and deformations, child objects of the item attached to the path will loose their local pivot and animation capabilities. You’ll be able to include them visually…but if you want to animate child objects on the boat, you’re going to have problems. This is becoming a common issue for me with in EI. The way the program handles parent/child relationships within the deformation and plugin architecture needs to be addressed. The program and the various plugins are getting to sophisticated not to have this work.

If you have pathfinder, you’ll be able to look at the project file as an example. The alignment to curve has been turned off…

v6+ and pathfinder required.

#54

Ok… I must correct myself.

I have now been able to obtain local rotation around the child objects local pivot point. My problem was I tried animating the child objects before integrating them into the plugin and deformation engines. Once that happened, the animation just simply disappeared even though keyframes existed. So…I tried animating the object after everything had been established on the path. Now placing keys worked correctly.

However, there is still a small bug…in my opinion. The rotate gnomon for the child object does not properly appear over the child object’s local pivot, but rather it shows up over the plugin’s center.

Its a little disorientating but hey… its working now.

Here’s a new project file for you to look at.

v6+ and pathfinder required.

#55

It works! but there is a limitation, it is a bit difficult to change the path, even though i can Bezier deform it but limit to 4 segments still not enough…and the object does not rotate to the wave normal…

actually I still not giving-up on the geometry constrain idea, my new idea will use more than 1 position to constrain geometry, more than 2 “pointer” to the rotation, and use the target weight and XP to smoothening the motion… but that will be after the phoenix contest (or even after the journey begins contest…:))

Loon

Edit: opps! Brian, I didn’t read your new post I’ll check on the new one…

#56

Actually you could change the path… if you use Path2Line. Of course… by nesting so many plugins together… things not only slow down… but they fail to properly update and refresh. Hence my request to Matt for 2d curve generation within EI.

#57

Actually that’s not true… you can obtain pitch control by activating alignment to path within Pathfinder. Then the “boat” will pitch to the waves as necessary. Runwave just makes some pretty detailed waves… and the boat pitches all over the place. That could probably be solved though.

#58

Brian, you are correct:), the path align resolve the problem, only keyframe manually to the ‘Roll’…it looks impresive…

Thanks,

Loon

#59

Gentlemen, we’ve read this thread, and, maybe, we missed something.

At least in theory, all EI deforms (count RunWave) should do what you want (as we understood you want boat’s motion according to waves). Any EI deform works like:

  • if “inherit deformation” is ON, then deform is applied to child (if it’s inside deform region)

  • if “inherit deformation” is OFF, then child is not deformed, BUT child’s center is affected by deformation (position and rotation as well). Again, if it’s inside deform region. The “child center” is what you see and can change in Link Editor. Unlike “Inherit deforms”, this action has effect for non-geometry objects as well

As we remember, constrains are applied after deforms

#60

Hey Guys…
Yah Runwave works great for ocean swells. One of the problems I’m having however is that the child’s local pivot for rotation, though properly positioned in the link editor, doesn’t show up properly in the camera window. Instead of the rotate gnomon/icon being over the child’s pivot center, it appears over the plugin’s center. Quite annoying.

Another example of deformations being a bit of problem is with Image2Mesh. Once the child object’s position is modified by I2M’s displacement feature, the child’s pivot does not remain with the child, rather it located around the plugin’s center. Any attempts to constrain to the child object fails.

Maybe I’m just doing something wrong. Perhaps there needs to be an option check box to permit constraints before or after deforms.