Re: secondary animation (deforming cushions)?

[Raffaele Fragapane <jaco(at)thejaco.com>]

for that kind of stuff, especially if it has a toon feeling to it, you'd 
be much better off using a combination of other things rather then 
simulations.

first get a geometry dense enough to describe deformations decently.
do the wrinkling work in displacement or normal/relief mapping if you can
connect modelled lattices to the parts of the body that will push 
through and use a falloff relative to the pre-deformed lattice's BBox; 
that will provide you with fairly good (and smooth enough) pushes you 
can get a decent look out of.

if you can do some basic scripting and linear algebra, you can also read 
the intersection between these lattices and the mesh (trivial geometry 
VS BBoxes) and use it to mask a weightmap, this weightmap can then be 
used to mask the wrinkling in and out.

I've used this technique for an ad, and similar techniques for a number 
of things, and there's A LOT you can get out of lattices and mixing maps 
with your shading, and you can get it realtime and hassle-free.

The alternative, which for such a simple model and volumes will work 
decently, is using XSI's soft-body simulations, get bodyprints of the 
key collisions in your animation, and doing assembly and clean-up at 
shape modelling stage.

Having used both Maya and XSI for similar things, I'd definitely go for 
XSI in this case, had it been particles, now that would be another 
thing... ;)

******************************
|     Raffaele Fragapane       |
|     Rising Sun Pictures      |
| "Remember, TD is for TopDog" |
******************************



Tim Leydecker wrote:

> Hi guys,
>
> I´m not too familiar (as in no prior experience) with
> animating things in XSI but like the speed it has with
> (subdivided) polygons and would therefor guess this
> also applies to deformations and secondary animation.
>
> I´m currently modeling the highrezprops over an existing
> pre-viz animation and am somewhat unsure if I could
> do secondary animation in XSI or should stick to Maya.
>
> All prior animation has been done lowrez in Maya...
>
> For XSI, I don´t know a good way to get controllable,
> semi-automated results, which - on the other hand I´d
> know for Maya but wouldn´t want to use as highly divided
> meshes are *veeeeeery* slow to redraw, making any
> (self)-intersection/penetration test a pain in the lower neck.
>
> http://www.hafenlola.com/downloads/Ley_deform.jpg
>
> What would you guys think I should do?
>
> In Maya, I´d create a custom wrapshape, make it a softbody
> with the initial wrapshape being a goal (to have it move back)
> and use that to deform a highrez (ZBrush/wrinkles/detail) mesh.
>
> I´d then have some simplified proxyshapes follow the character´s
> legsm arms and butt deform the softbody wrap for the cushions.
>
> This is would be good enough, clothwrinkles would be an asset.
>
>
> Cheers
>
> tim
>
>
>
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