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keyframes and soft-body animation

PeterHPeterH Posts: 0
edited December 1969 in Carrara Discussion

Hi everyone

Is it possible to fully keyframe a sequence that uses soft body animation?

Using a flapping flag as an example: if it were fully key framed, you could stretch the animation, move it to a different part of the timeline, edit it, and even save the sequence and use it elsewhere. You wouldn't be tied to starting such an animation at time zero. Adding further objects later and animating them using Physics would not recalculate/overwrite the movement data of the first sequence.

What I have found find is that changing the animation method from Physics to Keyframe seems to keyframe only the bounding box of the flag; the flapping stays as it was, separate from the keyframes, and gets left behind if they are moved. The soft body control panels stay as they were; "Clear Animation" in the control panel will do just that.

I don't know how soft body data is stored - it may be that it is not in a form that can be converted to keyframes. Anyway, I'd be interested to hear anyone's experience with this.

Thanks, Peter

Comments

  • DUDUDUDU Posts: 1,945
    edited December 1969

    You can do that for the movement made with "Motion/Physic", you calculate and after you select "Motion/images", you have now keyframes on the timeline.
    That don't work with "soft body" in the modifiers.

  • PeterHPeterH Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Thanks - I was afraid that would be the case.

  • DUDUDUDU Posts: 1,945
    edited December 1969

    I see now, it'snt "Images" but "Keyframes" in the English version of Carrara...

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,200
    edited February 2014

    only way I know is to export it as a series of obj files with morphs and skinning then load each on original as morph targets and animate those.

    and unfortunately Fenrics obj sequence exporter does not do morphs and skinning on softbody if I recall.

    Post edited by WendyLuvsCatz on
  • 3DAGE3DAGE Posts: 3,311
    edited December 1969

    Is it possible to fully keyframe a sequence that uses soft body animation?

    Using a flapping flag as an example: if it were fully key framed, you could stretch the animation, move it to a different part of the timeline, edit it, and even save the sequence and use it elsewhere.


    Hi

    Simply go to the motion panel and change the motion type, from physics, to keyframe.

    this will convert the Physics simulation to keyframed animation ...and create keyframes in the timeline.
    you could also save that as an NLA clip for that object. this would allow you to change the speed of playback, loop the animation or even reverse the motion.

    hope it helps.

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,200
    edited December 1969

    ANDY!!!! so happy to see you back on the forum (hugs)

  • Philemo_CarraraPhilemo_Carrara Posts: 1,175
    edited December 1969

    3DAGE said:

    Hi

    Simply go to the motion panel and change the motion type, from physics, to keyframe.

    this will convert the Physics simulation to keyframed animation ...and create keyframes in the timeline.
    you could also save that as an NLA clip for that object. this would allow you to change the speed of playback, loop the animation or even reverse the motion.

    hope it helps.

    Sorry to hijack this thread, but I'm very glad to read you again, Andy.

    I've missed your famous "hope it helps" for a very long time, now.

    Very sincerely, welcome back.

  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
    edited December 1969

    Philemo said:
    3DAGE said:

    Hi

    Simply go to the motion panel and change the motion type, from physics, to keyframe.

    this will convert the Physics simulation to keyframed animation ...and create keyframes in the timeline.
    you could also save that as an NLA clip for that object. this would allow you to change the speed of playback, loop the animation or even reverse the motion.

    hope it helps.

    Sorry to hijack this thread, but I'm very glad to read you again, Andy.

    I've missed your famous "hope it helps" for a very long time, now.

    Very sincerely, welcome back.

    And another thread hijacker saying "Hi Andy, nice to see you, to see you nice"

  • Sci Fi FunkSci Fi Funk Posts: 1,198
    edited December 1969

    Echoed.

    You are a most helpful and resourceful person indeed!

    welcome back 3dage.

  • 3DAGE3DAGE Posts: 3,311
    edited December 1969

    Thank you All . :)

    Hugs right back at you Wendy.

    It's good to get some time to get back here and do some fun stuff again.

  • PeterHPeterH Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Thanks to everyone for their comments, and apologies for taking so long to reply.

    Wendy, your suggestion looks worth exploring, so thanks for that.

    3DAGE - sorry to rain on your Welcome Back parade ;0) , but I think maybe you didn't read my original enquiry or notice the words "soft body". I wrote:


    What I have found find is that changing the animation method from Physics to Keyframe seems to keyframe only the bounding box of the flag; the flapping stays as it was, separate from the keyframes, and gets left behind if they are moved. The soft body control panels stay as they were; “Clear Animation” in the control panel will do just that.

    I don’t know how soft body data is stored - it may be that it is not in a form that can be converted to keyframes.


    Anyway, no biggy, as I have managed to work round this particular obstacle for now. But if anyone has any further thoughts on the subject I'd be interested to hear them. Thanks again for your suggestions.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Just a thought on this, but when you set up the renderer, you don't need to start at frame 0. You can define where it starts to render. You may be able to run a simulation for your flag blowing around at from 0 for the combined length of your scene, then you should be able to pick it up at various points in the timeline by rendering the scene with other starting points. Maybe this is the solution you found?

  • 3DAGE3DAGE Posts: 3,311
    edited December 1969

    HI PeterH :)

    sorry for messing up your thread :)

    The problem you're hitting is that traditional key-frame animation, records the translation and rotation of an object over time,. and any deformations of that object are normally created by using shape morphs, and key-frame animation can record the value changes in those morphs targets.

    In a soft-body physics simulation, the object becomes deformed based on the physical properties of the simulation.

    If you convert a physics simulation, into Key-frame motion,. what gets recorded is simply the change in position / rotation of the object,. but Carrara will also retain the physics soft-body deformations,.. as long as you don't try to move things in the time-line.
    (that allows you to continue working in the scene without effecting the outcome of the simulation)

    The deformation of a soft-body object, only exists as a set of calculations in the physics simulation, and as far as I know there's no way to simply create a physics soft-body simulation and then retain all that physical deformation within a key-frame animation.

    Rigid body simulations can be converted easily to animation is this way, ..because the mesh isn't being deformed.

    Soft-body has the basic motion plus physics deformations,. and key-frame can only record value changes, whether that's translation / rotation, or the value changes of a morph.

    To "Capture" a physics simulation as key-frame, or "non simulated" motion would require that each frame of the simulation be converted to a Morph target, or...converted to an animated mesh sequence, such as OBJ

    Fenric has a plug-in to export OBJ sequences from carrara.

    you could also export each frame as an OBJ (with morphs and skinning) and then build a new object by using the exported OBJ's as Morph targets.

    But,. no, there's no simple or easy way to capture the complex soft-body deformations,. within a key-framed animation, which can then be saved as animation or animated object, and reloaded into other scenes.

    Perhaps when / if the Bullet physics engine is completely integrated with Carrara, and finally out of Beta stage, there will be an internal ability to "Freeze" the simulation, or convert it internally to a morphing object,.. but not at this point.

    Hope it helps :)

  • PeterHPeterH Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Thanks to both - Yes, evilp., that was more or less what I ended up doing, and it worked pretty well. And thanks to 3Dage for a very thorough clarification.

    Once I can get my heart high enough to describe the problem in a reasonably clear and bite-sized way, I shall be starting a new thread concerning a continuing, different and very annoying glitch that I've been experiencing with physics animation in 8.5 - so I may well be talking with you both again soon. Anyway, thanks, have fun, and bye for now.

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