How to rig and animate a roman blind?

Support Animation and Rigging
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1

roman-blinds
roman-blinds1024×1024 60.9 KB

I did a version using stimulation and hooks but it looks terrible
any other way without stimulation
Im a noob in rigging so it would be helpful if someone could explain It in detail

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Geo Nodes would also be great

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@valid_user

Hi,

This what you’re after ?

A simple cloth simulation, using hooks that are animated, will produce the effect you’re after, and by then exporting the animation out as a Pointcache file ( you’ll need to enable the PointCache Format add-on in preferences - extensions )…

image
image687×503 32.6 KB

and adding the MeshCache modifier to the base RomanBlind mesh you can then animated this using a driver ( with the arrow in my example ) to manipulate the timing of the opening and closing of the blind without needing to re-simulate anything.

image
image2129×1102 295 KB

here’s my blend file and the pointcache ( .pc ) file that you’ll need to re-assign in the modifier depending on where you’ve saved it.

Hope something in there is of use,

Cheers,
Dj.
RomanBlind.blend (1.7 MB)

RomanBlind.pc2 (171.4 KB)

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4

hi
thanks for your solution
this is more or less what im going after
as mentioned before I did try the stimulation before and the way to animate it with keyframes is solved by the point cached method but the key problem is something I forgot to mention in my original query is that when the blind is fully/half open its should be flat
but due to cloth stimulation its getting that wavy pattern I tried adding some forces to manually compensate it. with the test file you gave but the problem is still there

Untitled
Untitled3508×2481 2.99 MB

5

Hi,

that’s where you have to get ‘creative’ . . .

I’ve reduced the weight of the cloth significantly, and also reduced it’s bending value, this makes it far less prone to ‘sagging’.

Then to force the cloth to be flat when in the ‘down’ state I’ve place an additional plane very close to the front of the cloth that collides with it and moves just ahead of the folding edge ( the plane is parented to the lowest Empty). This holds the cloth flat while hanging. The lower edge of this plane has a curled lip - this is deliberate to ensure that as the cloth collides it does not form a hard edge that might show in the simulation.

revised file and pointcache . . .

RomanBlind2.pc2 (171.4 KB)

RomanBlind_02.blend (1.8 MB)

Hope that helps.
Cheers,
Dj.

2 Likes
6

thank you so much
Ive been on this for very long.

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