Here’s a useful tutorial I made. It’s for intermediate to advanced users.
Minimum system requirements (vary according to number of springs used, mesh density and character complexity): 1Ghz processor.
This is an example of the results on a deformable mesh:
http://home.galileo.edu/~jalvarado/cosmix/curriculum_julio.html
This is the tutorial in HTML:
http://home.galileo.edu/~jalvarado/cosmix/tutoriales/index.htm
This is the tutorial by steps:
Skip to step 8 if you are an advanced user and know how to rig a bone.
-
You put a bone for each cluster. It is very important that the bone/mesh is oriented properly so that when the simulation occurs, the vertex/face normals around the cluster don’t go through the mesh.
-
Create the bones and points necessary for a full IK System in the TOP viewport.
-
To each bone independently (actually a bone{bone01} and its terminator bone{bone02}), add an IK limb constrain (in case you hadn’t already). An IKChain object is created by maxscript where appropiate and the bones follows it.
-
Create a point objects as necessary and align it with the IKChain using the options pictured. reiterating:you should have aligned point02 in orientation and position to the firstmost bone’s object pivot and the point01 to the IKChain01 object). Optionally, rename the new point objects and bones created to identify easily. Repeat to each parent bone the same process.
-
After creating, aligning and linking your parent bone {bone01} to point02 (the parent helper) link the IK system(s) point(s) to point01 as well. Also link point 01 to point02. Save your scene if not already.
-
Select point01 indepently and add a spring controller (preferably not from the animation menu, but from the animation panel) Create a gravity object, you will be using it to get the bounce needed. Also create a motion object such as a biped with animated footsteps and parent the bone system’s point parent to any part of the animated object as necessary for proper skin/physique deformation (If you are using physique, do this AFTER applying physique so that you may use these bones as extra bones).
-
To each point leave all spring parameters as they are defaulted, Mass=300, Drag=5; add an influence object, and make that any object (with -2 precedence) that is parent to the IK Chain’s parent point. Add gravity and add an influence as mentioned. proceed to step 8.
-
Heres the tricky part most people don’t get and there are no tutorials about it on the net from what I have seen. Change the damper factor of the new influence to -0,5. Set iterations to 2 or 3(slow but realistic: never 4). Repeat for each IK Chain’s parent point (this point is aligned with the IKC object).
Done! Play the animation and if your bones have assigned weights to your mesh (via Skin or Physique), You can see a soft body animation play in real time*. You could optionally mirror your created IK system by selecting the whole Ik System and mirroring it in the perspective viewport using the mirror tool. You can opt to instance the spring controllers but I have not tried it so I wouldn’t recommend it.
For more advanced users, if they don’t find the feature they want to map to their kbd, they can always write a macro script and map that.
It all depends of what you’re looking for.
and yes, I did read all those pages, Most of those tips i bet i forgot already, but you know, when you need something, you know it’s here and then u seek for it, and this thread has so many unneccesary posts here, it’s hard to find anything.