1000000£ problem

#1

Hi there

I’m trying to solve a little vfx for a short film me and my friend are shooting. What we need in few shots is to let 1000000£ to blow out of a car trunk. The car will be moving. So far I have a simple PFlow spraying planes and a noise modifier on it to make them bend and stuff. I guess it’ll be OK like this, given the shots are quite short, but I’m curious whether there’s a way to make a spray of money, that are actually colliding and behaving realisticly in their enviroment. I’ve spend yesterday and today looking for some ways, but nothing ended with success.

If you have any experiences with things like this (I’m completely new to PF) or some ideas on how to approach, please, let me know.

#2

Ractor or Cloth in combination with a wind or push object.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg_OiaPpPTY

#3

Well… of course, that would be possible some other time, but as I wrote, I need to emit them from a car trunk. In the example you’ve posted the leaves were pre-created. That’s not an option in my case. Or it might be, given there’s an option to change position of currently simulated mesh from the outside, but I dunno how to achive something like that.

One of the things I’ve tried actually was to create all these banknotes and assign simCloth modifier to them. Then using a simple birth script, I was positioning these on by one at their starting location, hoping the simulation will take care of the rest. But the thing is that during the simulation banknotes didn’t wanted to change their position (well one of them actually did :slight_smile:

I think the possible solution for this is using the PF tools box 2 with glue test and particle skinning. Unfortunately, I was able to make just the PF spreading the banknotes and the same PF spreading the rigs (or their representative meshes). Then I would need to birth group every new rig-mesh to make it into glued particles, but I dunno how to do it, or wheather it’s even possible (I mean each time a new particle is born… I found in the help how to do it if I have them all spawned).
Or I could precreate all the rigged/skined banknotes someplace else and then somehow change the possition of both the rig particles and the skin mesh of the banknotes one at the time, but I dunno how to address the particles representing the rig of the desired banknote. And even if I did, I guess it wouldn’t be very easy. And since I’m scripting/PFlowing the second day, I’m not feeling very like it :wink:

So If you can think of anything else, more suitable for my purpose, I’ll appriciate the help!

and please overlook the mistakes :wink:

#4

Don’t rule out scrimski’s suggestion good sir.

You have a car trunk right? you obviously know pflow. So. Scatter the notes inside a box volume in the trunk,

Snapshot/plfow baker as mesh all of your CASH$$$,
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/pflow-baker

This will create seperate geo objects for you. Now you have an initial position. Feed it into cloth sim.

Goodluck.

#5

that sim looks pretty bad a$$! thanks for sharing will have to play with that :slight_smile:

#6

Uuh - great stuff and well found scrimski :applause:

#7

very catchy title for the thread :slight_smile: here is a very nicely done video tutorial by joe gunn on using Cloth for simulating leaves… maybe you could use it for blowing notes as well!
http://www.joegunn3d.com/Tuts/ClothLeaves.htm

cheers! :slight_smile:

#8

That was the idea behind it. Should have point it out more clearly.
@Anslem: Not my sim, just an example to prove my point.

#9

Thanks a lot scrimski and lostdragon, but I still don’t see how can I use it. I haven’t specify it, but the idea in the shot is for the money to go out of the trunk one by one, not all at once and the trunk is not supposed to be opened all the way, just a little. I guess if I precreate them in any fashion, and somehow hide them in a trunk space I would still need to “make them active for simulation” one by one. The second problem would be, how can I actually move them so the inactive ones are still matching the car trunk position. Is it maybe possible to activate the simulation for each banknote at desired frame? Like this I would probably be able to solve it with a little script.

#10

You can sim them all blowing away at once. Then use a script to pointcache them, and offset the startframe of the pointcache. Select a bunch, offset, then select another bunch, offset. Cloth sim runs in object space, so you’ll be able to parent to the car after sim. Another option would be to actually sim them as you go - with the cloth modifier’s ‘start frame’ option a the moment it needs to be blown away.

#11

Thanks a lot Glacierise… since I don’t really know what is a pointcache (I could find out, but I’ve already spend much more time on it than I planned) guess I’ll try to go for the second option. Hope I’ll be able to make the sim to start at desired frames :wink:

Once again, thank you all for tips

#12

Point Cache s a modifier that basically stores every vertexex animation into a file. Helpful when you need/want to store animations on object base instead of a rig or deformer, it allows you to directly access finished results of simulations instead of resimming them everytime and you may also readjust start and end time of cached simulations.

#13

I did a great (if i may say so) sim of sheets of paper falling off a balcony. I used simcloth as i found it the easiest to control with wind space warps. Ill try to find the max file and send it to you…If i dont, remind me, send me an email at

info A T wltmt D O T com

as im sure ill forget and its 6am here and i need to go to bed now

Marc

#14

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.