i have animated a flag which you can view here
but my concerns are i want it as a header for a website and i want it to loop, but when you bake the cloth, it only works from 1 and unlike particles which you can start say at -20 for better result.
does anyone know of a way to solve this problem.
it would be good if we could have - starting in the cloth baking which i will suggest in the 2.5 suggestions thread
I’m not quite clear on your problem - if you want to start 20 frames into the bake then just start your render at frame 20. Looping seamlessly is a problem and I don’t have a good answer for that other than perhaps having a cloud fly by or perhaps having weighted goals that you animate towardss and from.
You could try copying all of the IPO points for vertices in the first frame, and pasting them into the last frame. I don’t know if that’s actually possible though.
Controlling the animation of a softbody is just really difficult. You might want to try displacement mapping, which can be easily keyed, and can give more of a gentle ripple than a blowing cloth effect.
Another method that might work well for seamless animation of this kind is to simply “mirror” the video:
Part one: have the video play once regularly.
Part two: have the same video segment play in reverse.
The variation of the clip you showed is dynamic and irregular and the “mirroring” effect should not be very noticeable.
The best part about this is that you should be able to test the outcome without having to rerender.
You could do something like this in Blender’s Sequencer easily, loading two video strips and activating Flip Time in the Sequencer’s Filter Panel (F10 KEY) for the second video.
You might want to shorten your video so, when doubled, it’s not so long.
Good luck with your project.
RobertT
thanks guys for your replies.
i thought about it a lot last night and i came to the same conclusion that you gave RobertT. the reverse effect.
thanks again for your input, i thought you might like to see what i did
Just wondering… what if you create 2 identical pieces of cloth and make each the target for a blend shape. Use the blend shape to fade between the first and second shape over the length of the animation so that just as the second shape finishes morphing in that it would be at the same animation position as the first shape at frame 1.
More complicated, but probably the most natural movement.
blendiac that does sound very complicated and is something i have’nt looked into could you link me to a tutorial that shows how to do it
