Problem with maya hair follicle - Insect's Feelers

#1

Hi all, I am doing rigging of an insect and have encountered some problems with it. 2 problems actually, and all centered around the feelers/ antenna part.

  1. I am able to use the hair/dynamics curves method but when I tried to do a test animation (with 50 frames), well, it is working fine but it is not behaving like how a feeler should be.
    When it is past over frame 20, the feelers just shifted down and towards downward. Then it just stopped like a thread hanging motionless.

As such, how should I make it to behave in a way that it will shift up again once it have hit a point?

  1. As I have only binded the skin, the feelers’ joints and the mesh only, when I start to make it parenting with the head, the feelers are not moving (The hair curves move but not the mesh as stated above).

How do I make it such that when I move the head, the feelers will move as well?

Many thanks in advance!

#2

Hey there,
First, I think you need a minimum of 200 frames, to allow the dynamics to settle into a rhythmic pattern. Second, getting the antenna to behave in a believable way with hair dynamics is gonna require a lot of trial and error by adjusting the attributes. Specifically, if you select the follicle node and go to Attribute Editor, under dynamic overwrites tab, check dynamic overwrites and adjust the stiffness value to a very low value. Also, under the hair system shape tab, I have found that adjusting the drag value low, and the gravity value high produces some pretty good results, but by all means experiment with the other values as well. I don’t understand the second part of your question. Ask it another way and I’ll see if I can help. Hope this helps.

#3

You could try and parent or constrain the follicle to the head joint and see if that works.
Post some screenshots and I can see if I can help further.

#4

Hi toolrush, thanks for getting back to me, greatly appreciated for it.
I have tried your method however, though I am somehow able to capture the motion I wanted but still the feelers of mine will just keep dropping downwards (even if I have length the number of frames) and there isn’t an instance where it will goes up…

So I guess more adjustments on the dynamics values?

To my second part of my question, as my feelers is a mesh on its own and the head is another mesh, when I tried parenting and rotates the head (so that the hair/curve will move accordingly to the movement of the head), the overall mesh does moves but the curve is not moving until the head is at a rest position…

Thus, perhaps in the first place, for the 2 mesh namely the feelers and the head, do I combine it as a mesh or leave it as 2 seperate mesh?

I have placed a video below as mentioned, perhaps it will be clearer for you?
Video

#5

Hey there,
There are still a few things I’m unclear about, in reference to how everything is setup, but I will give you a rundown of how I would set up everything from the beginning. 1) Select and combine all the geometry so that it is one mesh.2) Create the joint chain. I would start at the base of the neck/head and move on to the tip of the head, then branch off and create another chain up the left antenna and mirror this chain for the right antenna. (The base joint is important because this is where the head turn animation will come from. It looks like you animated the actually head mesh and this is not good.) 3) Skin bind the mesh to the joint chain.(I would do a smooth bind just to keep things simple for now).4) create the dynamic hair chain starting from the antenna’s base joint to the tip. I don’t know exactly how you set up the chain, but I use a method similar to how it is explained in the link below.5)Finally, create the head turn animation on the base joint(which controls everything else) and you should be fine.
Good Luck!!!

http://www.cgtantra.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16114

#6

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