twistereli

Hi, I'm animating a mechanical arm that should unfold like the segment at 1:11 in the video below. I tried using 2 IK chains starting from the base going to that small center piece, but just using constraint tags with clamps got me closer. What would be the right way to tackle this? My parts keep disconnecting from each other no matter what I try so far. All tutorials show how to IK rig arms that have moving goals. But I need a rig where only the parts in the center can move. Also attaching the .c4d file using just clamp constraints Any insight is welcome, I'm kinda lost. Thanks! 1678174493_ArmsRigSimplified.c4d

The animation I'm trying to design is a sphere bouncing on the floor in a simple curve. Every time it hits the ground it branches of in 3 (or any number) copies of the same animation, but delayed of course. The finished spline animations remain visible. I added a project file to get the main idea I've been trying to get this effect going, but I ran out of ideas to automate it. You can guess how quickly the amount of copies add up. Manual duplicating and offsetting animations (even with alembic animations) would take a long time. I'm afraid this might become a complicated xpresso thing, but was hoping there's more of a mograph thing I'm missing. Maybe having an effector connected to the spheres to trigger animations that are already set up on a grid... but I can't wrap my head around it. Any ideas are welcome! Branching Bounce.c4d

Thank you for taking the time to even record the technique! Very much appreciated! That's a clever way of doing it. Starting from a connected edge, then rotating probably is the best way to do it with the tool available. Also never heard of that axis extension, super useful stuff.

2 platonic objects or more. Snapping them together with their surfaces like magnets, LEGO, you name it. The snapping is poly-on-poly/flush and the points of the 2 polygons line up.

I'm not too familiar with the snapping functions in C4D, but I was trying to figure a way to do the following: Having a default platonic object or anything alike (triangle polygons) and being able to make copies that perfectly line up a triangle of each object. In other words, have 2 triangle polygons snap to each other where all points also line up. If it only works with square polys I wouldn't mind going with that. Doing it manually would be a nightmare. Maybe the axis of the object should/could be set to one of the polygons with proper rotation and all that... but IDK how to go about all of it.

Thanks! That looks like a really close match for such few polygons! Yes, starting from topology that originates from the road seems to be the way to go to save some time. Ended up using the loft still, but with less splines. Just the left and right side of the road, then 2 simple freehand drawn splines in the distance. Doesn't give a square, but good enough for the cause. After subdividing the loft to somewhat square polys it wasn't too difficult using the smooth tool getting rid of creases. Using stitch & sew for the parts that disconnected by accident.

It indeed is very dense. Unfortunately I'm not allowed to alter it because camera motion and xpresso depend on it. Thank you for looking into it regardless. Mostly wanted to verify I'm not overlooking a better method of doing this.

Tried that, but it looks like I need an insane amount of subdivisions for it to be somewhat clean.

You're right, it just has given conflicts in the past with other stuff. Anyway, here is the isolated spline/road + the loft I have for now. Created the extra splines with the "create outline" feature. road_landscape.c4d

Currently I'm trying with a loft object. It gives the closest result. Smoothing out the creases is manageable. But it would be better if they weren't there to begin with. 1 thing I'm not sure of is how to end the loft in a square shape, if possible. For now I added a U-shape on both sides to fake it. Can't really share the file, so sticking with screenshots for now

So I'm working on a project where there is a predefined road. It is just a sweep on a curvy spline that goes in all directions. It's really long btw, so I'm not looking for manual modeling. I need to get a landscape right under that road, so it connects. The logical thing to do would be getting wider sweep that represents the land, then resculpt that a bit. The problem is that such wide sweeps intersect in tight corners, making it useless even after smoothing with the sculpt tools. My question is if there is any way to just have a landscape object for example and sort of line it up with the road sweep? So that's the other way around of having a landscape and projecting the spline on it. The thing that usually happens.

Very impressive Bezo. That's exactly what it has to be. Thank you! So may I ask you about the Xpresso setup, why does there need to be a constant input of 0.084 for every step? Or even better, why that number? Also about Daniel's try, removing that part as I mentioned rather fixed it than break it. Don't know why though, just something I found while playing with it.

Awesome! This is the method I expected. But I didn't have enough understanding about the Constrain tag to make it work. The weird thing is it misbehaves when moving the slider too fast or animating it. EDIT: That behavior is gone when removing the clamp with the head null on the tail null. Just FYI. I'll also have to take a look how to connect the other single railed panels to it. Thank you for making this file!!

Currently I'm faking it with a spline wrap so I can manually rotate the top panel. But there is some deformation+stretching on it because of that. So if that could be fixed I'm also a happy man. garagedoor_splinewrap.c4d

I've been trying to animate a garage door mechanism. Basically it's what you can see in the following video at 1:47 To do this I tried to go with the most simple solutions first. I have a bunch of clones passing through a bend object. This works almost perfectly, except for the 1 panel at the top. In the video you can see how it moves along 2 different rails. The upper beam of the top panel slides separately in order to close the door correctly. So I feel like this has to be done with some dynamics? But I need some animation control, it can't be done with just gravity. Is there any technique in which such mechanical constructions are best rigged? I was thinking about using the Connector object, but can't figure out a working setup.