Ball through garden hose (Cartoon Animation)

[Spin]

What I really want is a hose that looks like it is filling a tank. In a cartoonish way for a cartoon animation. The hose bulging with flow as the liquid flows through.

I want this to loop forever in the background of my scene. My animated scene is a few minutes long.

Here’s the blend file I created:
Hose-Ball.blend (124.6 KB)

I am using a ball that you will never see in the final video. The hose is a simple CURVE with depth added. I just needed the ball to make the hose have the bulging effect using a CAST modifier. It would really be nice to have several bulges in a row of different sizes, but I have not figured that out yet.

Any help or suggestions is appreciated. I am open to any ideas. Perhaps there is a completely different way to doing this.

[keihaankarkinen (Janne Kärkinen)]

I don’t understand much about nurbs, but would it be possible to use metaballs? Or lattice modifier…?

[Spin]

I’m not familiar with that, but I’ll have to look into itt. Thanks.

[thoslos]

@sozap gave a perfect example of something like this a little while ago:

Trying to figure out the best way to bend one object around another?

Yeah the cool thing is that there is no binding, but it can be a bit confusing at first, because indeed you might be tempted to adjust it in edit mode like probably everything that should be done in blender… But you should indeed adjust it in object mode ! This allows different kind of effects by making the geometry passing through the lattice such as that : [test] And BTW there is a new operator to automatically adjust it : [image] Add some shape key to it if you like and here you go, no…

[sozap]

Hello ! The simplest way is to use either cast or lattices.
If you need several of them you’ll need to duplicate the setup, but at least you can loop the motion so you don’t have to animate hundreds of them through the whole 1mn…

There are probably ways to setup that so it’s more automated but I’m not sure it’s worth the effort for that case…

[revolt_randy]

Carwash gone awry

The hose is a bezier curve. Used a lattice with a shapekey to make the bulge at the beginning. 2nd and 3rd shots uses a Cast modifier. Had problems with the hose when the bulge reaches the handle. The Cast modifier moved the end of the hose around a small amount. Quick action and rendering with motion blur kind of hid this error, but you can see it if you look close enough.

Randy

[Spin]

I finally got it to work with one “ball”. Loops forever.

It would have been nice to have several balls different sizes. I just don’t think there is a practical way of doing that at all in Blender.

I had to key-frame every frame one at a time to keep the ball in the center of the hose that has a cast modifier. The only way to make it stable.

The hose is a curve with depth added to make it look like visible. I applied a Cast Modifier to the hose with the ball as the ‘object’.

I key-framed the ball travel. One at the start and one at the end 50 frames over. Each frame I had to move the ball to center of the hose and applied an additional keyframe location. 50 frames, 50 keys.

I also key-framed the Cast factor of the hose to make it minimal swelling at the ends and heavy swelling in the middle (50 frames to match the ball travel).

Finally I looped the process to play in a loop forever by going in the Graph Editor and applying a “Cycles Modifier” to the keys of the ball and to the keys of the Cast Factor.