Animating Wires

[srgb]

Hi,

I'm trying to animate wires to act as tentacles and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for me to get started. I thought about applying some bones to each individual wire, but I fear that I may not be able to get the believable wire 'flow' movement that one can achieve in DOPs. My challenge lies in the fact that the wires are meant to be 'alive', and not just hanging off the object. They need to be able to move up into the air and then have the flexibility (in terms of control) to be able to grab something (i.e. a small object).

Any thoughts on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you ladies and gents

srgb

[AA74]

Hi!

i think that what you need is basically a rig;

I would approach such a set-up by basically using a blend shape technique switching from a dynamic tentacle and a rigged one;

so when you need to animate it by hand you just animate the transition and then the controls you put to drive the rig;

then it depends a lot on the final look you want to achieve, let's say for the tentacles of the Pirates(:-) ) I think they used a way more advanced technique, does anybody of the guys here worked on?, maybe some advise from them should be great

Cheers!

Andrea

[rdg]

I think they used a way more advanced technique

I was at the (Autodesk) ILM presentation in Munich where Joel Aron gave some information about the pirates.

They did it with Maya and had a custom simulation for the tentacles that run overnight after animating the hero tentacles, if I understand right.

Georg

[michael]

your best bet is to look into the wire deformer

[srgb]

Hey, thanks to everyone for your advice, I've just got back and can't wait to try all your suggestions.

Cheers,

srgb

[digitallysane]

Read the CHOPs deforming geometry article series here:

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com...&Itemid=216

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com...&Itemid=216

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com...&Itemid=216

CHOPs can be a good approach for what you need, either by directly deforming your geometry or for animating the control rig (bones or wire)

Dragos

[srgb]

Thank you Dragos, I've never tried CHOPS before, this looks like some really interesting stuff!

[srgb]

Hi,

With the direction of my current project having deviated from its original course, I am now trying to animate a single wire-like object to look as though it has a wave travelling down it (i.e. when you take a length of rope or string and shake it from one end.. the 'wave' moves downits length). I've done some tests in CHOPs and come up with the attached hip file.

Now my challenge is that I want to have each end of the rope constrained to a static point, with the wave still happening along the rest of the rope. Any ideas? I thought that I might have to somehow transfer the CHOP wave data into a DOP netwrok that contains a wire.. but I have no idea how to do this at this present time. Or, if there is some way to constrain the end points using a points SOP possibly.. this too, I have no idea how to do yet.

Thanks for your time .

cheers,

srgb

wireWaveTest_01_03.hip

[Richard]

Now my challenge is that I want to have each end of the rope constrained to a static point, with the wave still happening along the rest of the rope. Any ideas? I thought that I might have to somehow transfer the CHOP wave data into a DOP netwrok that contains a wire.. but I have no idea how to do this at this present time. Or, if there is some way to constrain the end points using a points SOP possibly.. this too, I have no idea how to do yet.

Thanks for your time .

cheers,

srgb

Hey srgb,

Im facing a similar problem to you I have my tentacle/wire moving really nicely but I want to attach a "head" (a robot type model) to the wire. I was wondering if you managed to solve this problem.

I have tried parenting the head onto one of the normal of one of the points at the front of the wire and while this works in terms of the movement it also give me some weird rotations which you dont notice on the curved wire shape but when you attach the head it appears like it swimming but it has had a few drinks too many as the head rotates over and back.

Thanks in advance

Richard.