Paper people chain

[dotcommer 0]

So i'm sick on a 3-day weekend. I thought i'd try to learn something new while I'm sitting in bed doing nothing.

 

I've got a paper chain of people and i'm trying to figure out cloth dynamics to unfold them and let them dangle. I'm having issues though with the dynamics. The heads of the people are flopping over. Could anyone suggest any ideas as to how I could fix this? Maybe there's weight painting I need to do or something similar? I've taken advice elsewhere and upped the iterations as well as maxed out stiffness and flexion, but no joy. I don't know a lot about cloth aside from making a simple flag waving or a pillow, so if there are other techniques that could help with this I'm all ears. i've included the project file I'm working on for reference. Thanks for any help!

 

 

http://www.deltawavefx.com/uploads/PaperPeopleChain_011913.c4d.zip

 

[tcastudios 0]

Play around with Belt Tag(s) and get well soon.

 

Cheers

Lennart

[dotcommer 0]

Play around with Belt Tag(s) and get well soon.

 

Cheers

Lennart

 

Thanks. Messing with the belt tag, it seems to keep vertices stuck in the air and not be effected by the rest of the cloth with gravity. Am I going about this wrong? I'm not entirely sure what the belt tag could do for me because I'm not trying to stick geometry to other geometry, I'm just trying to get a rigidness to it.

[J Montreuil 0]

How about Spline Dynamics and Spline Wrap/Spline Effector?

Edited January 20, 2013 by J Montreuil

[RVA8 0]

I got something pretty decent to work using Spline Dynamics and the Spline Deformer.

 

R

[dotcommer 0]

I'll have to give the spline dynamics a try then. I'm wondering how you'd animate unfolding the cutouts though?

[vozzz 2]

i think you need more divisions, and more tactically placed edges so as to not let the heads fold, maybe?

 

or make a chain out of simple square polygons, and then use mesh deformer to apply animation to the cut outs?

[dotcommer 0]

Spline dynamics seem to be working the best... but I can't figure out a good solution for unfolding the chain. They should all be folded up and stacked behind each other, and then pulled apart to reveal the chain. I may have to just cheat it and show it already pulled out because it looks like doing this dynamically is going to be a real head ache.

[Zmurowski 0]

Just thinking out loud now. How about you create a simple mesh first - this would be a strip of polygons - each of them as big as a single "link" of the chain. Now righ it with joints. Fold it, give it IK tag and enable dynamic. This already should give you a good aproximation. Now if you'd like to give life to polygons you can create a denser mesh - make it into a cloth and apply the low poly mesh as a belt. Alternatively use the low poly mesh as your mesh deformer and add jiggle deformer to the high poly mesh.

[dotcommer 0]

Ok, after a few days of messing around with it, I think i've got a solution for myself. I used suggestions from J Montreuil and Zmurowski and created an IK chain for the cutouts, folded them up, then unfolded them using an animated goal, then took this result and deformed it along a spline with spline dynamics. Works out really well! Here is the source file for others to pick through and learn from.

 

Thank you to everyone who chimed in on this!

 

Project File:

http://www.deltawavefx.com/uploads/PaperPeopleChain_012113.c4d.zip

[dotcommer 0]

Oh yeah, final result here:

http://vimeo.com/58119965

Entered it into the GSG 5sec. project for the heck of it.