Lattice woes

I’m currently working on a project where I need a ball to travel through a tube and as it does so cause the tube to bulge.

I’ve been experimenting with Lattices to achieve this effect, and am very nearly there. But I am receiving LOTS of un-wanted effects. Here is a sequence of shots of the actual effect that I have achieved and am pleased with:

http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/3936/movingin3vw.th.pnghttp://img265.imageshack.us/img265/7702/justin7uj.th.pnghttp://img277.imageshack.us/img277/7671/inside4ko.th.png

As you can see, there is a bulge in the tube with a tail (or wake) which is just about perfect for what I am after.

The first un-wanted effect however is that the beginning of the tube that you can see in the third screenshot above has been moved away from where it began by the Lattice. I need the tube to remain exactly where it is the whole time… for the effect of the Lattice to be much more localised when affecting the tube.

And another side effect of this ‘non-local’ Lattice interaction with the tube is shown here:

http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/7136/outside3ny.th.png

There’s a huge bulge in the tube adjacent to where the Lattice is, in an area that I need to remain un-affected… until the Ball / Lattice is inside the tube.

Can anyone suggest how I can make the Lattice only affect the tube while it is INSIDE the tube. And even then, only a localised area of the tube so that once the lattice has moved on the tube is back to where it started ???

Many thanks in advance,
Matt

Yep, unfortunately, there seems to be no way of controlling the field of influence of lattices.
How about bones? if you set it to work on envelopes only, and tweaked a single bone so that it is very short and adjusted the envelopes so that it is almost spherical, perhaps it could get you a similar effect? Haven’t tried it, so I don’t know if it will work or not…

yikes, thanks grafix… i’ve never used envelopes before at all. will give it a try tho and let you know!!

thanks (again !!)

It looks interesting! Can we see the animation when it’s done? :slight_smile:

Why don’t you use softbody? here is a little proof of concept.
http://web.axelero.hu/ceze1/concproof.avi
I know it doesn’t look great, but it took about 5 minutes to set up experementations included.

Thanks Erufailon that looks really promising !!

I’ve never used Soft Bodies (I’m a bit of a newbie with Blender), although I did have a quick fiddle with it I didn’t get anywhere. Can you give me a quick tutorial… just what you did to create that animation ??

Yoeri : i’m certainly hoping to show this off when it’s finished :slight_smile: it’s actually the 2nd animation in a series that i’ve been asked to create at work. the first was done in 3D Studio (which i hate) but if you’re interested you can see the end result here.

This second one i’m working on now is hopefully going to explain VPN tunnelling to the masses (hence all these blasted tubes !!)

quickly knitted a blend
“ball in tube” is it on
http://mosebjorn.altervista.org/sbe/BSE.html
/* sure you know ALT_A will run the animation */
it uses:
the tube as softbody , roughly tunend to respond to the force field generated by the ball like object moving along a path, a vertex group ‘goal’ painted to keep tube’s ends fixed
BM

I’ve had success with using blend as a displacement texture and and setting an IPO curve.

looks very good
the thing is I hit the render button at frame 5 and got a strange render. What is it?:rolleyes:

Dear Bjorn / LW,

You have saved my life :smiley: I’ve now scrapped the Lattice and am using a Softbody with a Spherical force-field to create the effect.

You guys are so kind and helpful… I cannot thank you enough !

Once I get a full rough draft of my project I’ll post it in WIP for some more feedback. For the moment I only have short segments of random effects which on their own do not mean anything.

Once again… thank you ALL so much for your time and efforts in helping me !!

Matt

you’ re welcome
… with such an elaborated request you’ ll very likely get equal quality response :slight_smile: … dunno why Erufailon gave you no .blend since i think he had the same idea.

However could you solve your growing issue ?

BM

warning to shr1k: grow up! Next time i’ll ask the mods to remove ‘jokes’ like that … /me beeing very serious on that.

Hi Bjorn :slight_smile:

Yes, thank you. The growing issue is no longer an issue. In fact I got a bit flashy with it and created 2 textures… one horizontally and one vertically (Flip XY). After lots of fiddling with the Blend Mode and finally figuring out to invert one texture use Subtract to remove the required bits and bobs, I now have a rather good looking tube - the very beginning of which ‘emerges’ from the bottom and ‘gows’ vertically upwards. the rest of which then extends out laterally. very snazzy looking stuff :smiley:

As soon as it’s a bit more complete i’ll post the first full draft in WIP for more guidance :slight_smile:

All the best,
Matt