Q1… Is there a way to pin soft bodies, for example if I were to model a pair of pants how would I pin it to the character where the belt would be so the pants don’t fall off…
Q2… After modeling and rigging a high polygon character, is there a way to make a low polygon double that would be seen for the purpose of animating the character and playing it in real time in the 3D work space to preview what it would look like before rendering the high polygon character… For example you could add all the key frames with a low polygon non-renderable model that when rendered it would not display the low polygon model but the high polygon textured model… (I hope I’m being clear enough…)
Q3… If I were to simulate a soft body for an animation with a high polygon count and I wanted to create a low polygon copy… Is there a way to simulate the soft body on the low polygon copy and have the high polygon copy follow the same deformation of low polygon copy…
Q4… Animated Hair, is there a way to use static particles to make hair that would take the shape of a curve thing path or whatever it was called that I could apply a softbody to the path curve thing the the static particles would follow so when a character would move the hair would move… (Or how would I make animated hair, without modeling the hair as an object and aplying a softbody and texture to make it look like hair…)
Q2… In the subsurf modifier there are two places to set the subsurf level. The top number is for the 3D view, and the bottom one is for the level used in rendering.
Q3… Don’t know. Maybe just bake the low poly soft body and apply a subsurf?
Q4… This is possible, but someone else will have to explain how.
About question 2 I meant if I modeled a high polygon character that was fully textured could I make a low polygon character out of cylinders and spheres that I could use so I could see the speed of the animation of how it will be before I render so I don’t wait 5 hours for it to render when the movement is choppy any way…
What does SB stand for… And about Fligh’s answer to question one, is there a link to a tutorial, or a place where I can find a bunch of information about softbody settings… (I don’t know about vertex groups or either I don’t understand what you are saying…
About Q4, where would I get a tutorial on animated hair that moves when the character jerks their head to observe their environment…
Yes, you can, but why don’t you just use the 3D window amd Alt-A? Or use The Preview Render (Shft-P in 3D Viewport)? Unless you’re using Envelopes, fo a Low Poly object you will still need to assign or paint the Vertex Groups to their bones, then you could just use the little menu at top-left of Link and Materials tab to swap from one Mesh to the other.
one thing you can try is to hit the “sync” button in the scene buttons (switch to the sound settings tab). This will try to have the Alt-A preview always run at the output framerate (by dropping frames, etc). If that doesn’t work (it has to drop too many frames and becomes choppy etc) you can try rendering a playblast instead of rendering out an animation.
to render a playblast (openGL preview), ctrl-click the rightmost button (looks like the scene button) in the header of the 3d view.
For your actual question, getting a low poly stand in. normally, I’d think you’d do this by hand.
a couple options, which you may or may not like.
use proxy objects like rectangles and spheres, for a really rough estimation.
take your existing mesh, copy it, and decimate it. note that decimating your mesh will destroy edgeloops/topology, and undo UV-maps and armature weighting.
something like this was done for simulating the coat on one of the Elephants Dream characters. don’t remember what they did exactly or where I read that though. I think hooks and vertex parenting were involved.
solutions have been mentioned. additionally, the particle rewrite being done by jahka extends this functionality enormously (well, the entire particle system will be orders of magnitude more powerful). Soft body on guide hairs is ridiculously easy to set up there, with controls for grouping, clumping etc around guides. you can check out a test build but its still being worked on and not part of official blender yet.
Is there a way you would recommend me animate my character because before I render it I’m not sure how fast the character will move because I could be trying to make the character walk but when I render it, it turns out to be a goofy looking run… (I actually haven’t tried animating anything like that, I’m just trying to make sure I never make that mistake so I don’t waste render time…) Is there a way to preview an animation with the sounds to make sure it looks right before rendering?
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BSoD/Physical_Simulation/Soft_Body#Simulating_a_flag_in_a_pole
By using the tutorial from the link on how to make a flag with soft bodies they created a vertex group that they named ‘pole’ (how do you make a vertex group)… And if I used this in soft body clothing, and created a vertex group on the characters cloth pants around the belt area it should hold the pants up, but if I had the character move, would the vertex group, that is serving as the belt, follow the character or would I have to manually move the pants belt area to follow the character or would it behave like a rigid body (I think that’s what it’s called…)…
if you use the control key and click on the mountain picture in your 3d viewport (way off to the right) it renders a playblast or gl animation render, a regular click gives you a screen shot of the 3d viewport. very useful and easy to test rendering animations with a lot less of the time.
You seem to have a lot of basic terminology/interface questions … I know it seems a chore but just even looking through the Wiki manual once can help you orient yourself in using Blender : http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual … Or better yet if you do not like reading on the computer order the new “Essential Blender” book at : http://www.blender3d.org/e-shop/ and help yourself while helping the Blender Foundation out (and they have a tool on the site to convert to dollars from Euros on the site)…
And having said that here are some answers to some of your questions :
Alt-A is the hotkey combo to play animations (if any) that you have keyed .
Shift-P, In the context that Fligh mentioned, is for opening up the preview window in the 3D view (a small window which you can resize will appear that show you how your render might look like).
If you have any more questions about hotkeys and their combinations use the Help menu in the Blender header . It has a “Hotkey and MouseAction Reference” python script that indexes all the hotkeys etc. This along with the “Scripts Help Browser” are the only two off line internal Blender help files available .
Envelopes are 1) a way to display armature bones and 2) the area of influence/control a particular armature bone has in 3D space, you see this are a “gray” area that surrounds a bone when viewed in the envelope mode . You turn on envelopes by first selecting the armature object then hitting F9 (Editing) context in the Buttons Window and hitting “Envelope” (the last of the four display types) in the Armature panel .
Your question about recommendations on animating your character so as to not waste rendering time is indicating to me that you are not understanding what everyone else has been informing you of about rendering and animations …
You have to look at it this way : there are two layers/types of “rendering” that goes on in Blender, the interactive real time OpenGL rendering (the stuff that happens when you move the mouse or hit a key) and the rendering that happens when you hit the “Render” or “Anim” buttons in F10 (Scene) context in the Buttons Window … the latter is when the computer works overtime and laces you lovely creation with textures, raytracing, radiosity etc. etc. and seems to take for ever because of the complex calculations required …
The OpenGL type of rendering takes much less resources then a full render and so should be (and is by default) the place where you experiment with animations . And there is a way to actually render an OpenGL (what you see in your monitor) animation as others have said before . Once you have keyed your animation and have set the proper file format and directories you can hold down the Ctrl key and hit the little landscape icon found at the far right of the 3D header . That will give you an animation file that you do not have to wait long rendering times for because it does not render complex calculations like raytracing, radiosity etc., just the OpenGL render that you can see on the monitor .
And the OpenGL animation will play at the speed at which you have keyed your animation .
… And no it does not play sounds … but neither will a full render … You will always have to add sound later using the Video Sequence Editor (which you can do now) in Blender or in another software .
And finally on making vertex groups … Tab into Edit Mode with your mesh object selected and in F9 (Editing) context in the Buttons Window in the Links and Materials panel under “Vertex Groups” hit New . This will create the default “Group” name in the drop down menu - rename it to whatever you want so that you’ll remember it later - now in the 3D view select the vertices you want to be in this vertex group . Go back to the Links and Materials panel and hit “Assign” … and nothing will seem to have happened … so hit “Desel.”(ect) and your selection will be deselected then hit “Select” and your vertex group will be selected/highlighted again . You can remove vertices from a vertex group by selecting the unwanted vertex/vertices and then hitting “Remove” . Or even delete an entire vertex group by making sure the proper name shows in the drop down menu and hitting “Delete” … Or you can do this with Weight Painting as well …
And if you still don’t understand : http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Vertex_Groups and http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Weight_Paint
But seeing as how you don’t seem to have enough experience with Blender to know basic stuff like vertex groups and the different render types maybe you should start with a nice overall introduction to animation : http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BSoD/Introduction_to_Character_Animation before you try and do complicated stuff like softbody clothing and different vertex resolution models … I’m not trying to put you down or anything but a lot more experienced users have been working on softbody clothing especially with not the greatest of results yet … and what you seem to want to do isn’t impossible but there are some limitations that are not even Blender specific that prevent an easy implementation of what you want to do . So try and get some more understanding of how Blender and CG at present state of the art works before taking on the “cutting edge” stuff …
Thanks, I hope you understand that the reason for my dumb questions are because I’m very new to Blender and haven’t really had that much 3D experience… I’m still struggling with character modeling so if some one could give me miracle advice or something that would be great…
Hair: I did something that was simpler than softbodies, but which simulated hair movement in my “Rocky” animation. Look lower down the page (on page 2) for the picture with the curve guides and the the description about slow parenting.Best of luck
Thanks for the second link, I have seen Toloban’s Softbody thread before, thanks for the link on hair…
If any one knows of a miracle modeling tutorial that can improve my character modeling ability I would be most greatful for the information… But it would have to be a tutorial that teaches how to use the method for other character models, not just the one in the tutorial, a tutorial that shows how to decide how to make the character in 3D in the best way possible…
