Question: Possible to animate dforce surface settings?

colcurve

Is it possible to animate dforce surface settings, e.g. switch expansion to contraction at certain keyframe? Changes to the settings seem to not be captured by keyframes?

Richard Haseltine

Currently animation of surface properties is not directly available, but you could use the Post Load Data item system to link a property on a node (which can animate) to the surface property http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/scripting/api_reference/samples/start#elements

Matt_Castle

Richard Haseltine said:

Currently animation of surface properties is not directly available, but you could use the Post Load Data item system to link a property on a node (which can animate) to the surface property http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/scripting/api_reference/samples/start#elements

Unless there's been big changes to dForce since I last tried it, I believe all animation of dForce properties is moot, as the parameters of the simulation are set at the start.

It would, for example, be extremely useful to be able to make things become visible or invisible to the simulation partway through - It's not uncommon for dForce surfaces to get stuck in each other, so if you were using a primitive to help push/pull/support stuff to get it into place, having the object be able to disappear entirely once it's done its job and would now be in the way is much better than trying to animate it out of the way, where it will likely drag along vertices that are stuck in it. Or, if a helper is only needed later in the simulation but would get in the way to begin with, have it appear when required.

However, I've tried linking in the visibility to an animated parameter, and it's not worked; the object retains the visibility it had at the frame you started the simulation on regardless of what you do.

Richard Haseltine

The simulation does haev a lot of work to do so it is possible that the properties will ignore any chnages to values, I didn't actually test to see if it works. I would not be surprised in visibility failed to animate even if other properties do, though your pessimism may well be warranted from what I am told.