Leather in Motion Designer?

[intofx]

Trying to simulate a leather shift boot in a car. Everything I've tried is too "gooey." When I "shift" from gear to gear the boot either wobbles too much or doesn't fold enough. The leather should be pretty stiff but still flexable and foldable. The results I'm getting look like billowing cloth. I'm tempted to just do this with morph targets.

Oh, also - When I turn on self collision the thing goes NUTS. Any suggestions? TIA

Matt

[cgolchert]

What does your mesh look like? ..and how are you setting it up?

[HowardM]

MD is so tricky...have you read about using it for Hard Bodies? Search here and on cgTalk...You probably need to jack up the Hold and Spring....also your collision objects weight may be too high...Id say you have to get it to work with Self collision, otherwise it wont look right...

[cgolchert]

That is why I asked about the mesh. There may be no need for collision detection.

[Mylenium]

Do you use multiple surfaces for different regions (= ability to use different stiffness values)? I think that is the key to success. A shame MD cannot work with weight maps. This looks like a perfect example for it.

Mylenium

[HowardM]

http://www.3dink.com/stickshiftMD2.gif

Here is the scene FILE (www.3dink.com/MDstickshift.zip) Its a littler rubbery, but tweak and recalculate it....

enjoy!

[cgolchert]

'Tis a rubber boot though.

This might be too small to see.


edit: man that playback is slow.

[hrgiger]

I took Howard's file and tweaked it some, added a few fixed surfaces and Voila':

[papou]

nice hrgiger, can you share settings?

[hrgiger]

Actually, I forgot to save my settings. Duh.

But what I did was I selected a portion of the leather right up at the top where it connects to the shiftlever and set that as fixed in motion designer. I also weightmapped that top fixed region with the same weight as the gearshift and knob and then used a bone to control the shifting motion. This way the top of the leather moves with the shifter. I also selected a few rings at the bottom of the leather and made them fixed as well. So now MD is just controlling the middle portion of the leather.

If I remember correctly, I started with the rubber preset and then made the weight .5 (you don't want it to drop down or sag), I upped the hold setting to around 4 or 5 and then made the substructure really high. Then I think I made the stretch fairly low like 10 or something.

[intofx]

Good to see you guys are taking the ball and running with it. :) I worked on it a bit last night and I came up with a pretty good example. I'll post if I get a chance. I'm controling the shifting with morph targets rather than the shifter itself. The results are pretty good. The only issue I'm having now is a momentary sharp crease during one of the shifts.

I see you guys are having the same rubbery issue I was running into. The shifter I'm trying to reproduce is from a 2002 Corvette - this one in particular:
http://Vetteessentials.com/morepics/morepic11.jpg

I like the way your shift lever deforms the boot but I can't keep the boot from giggling around too much. Leather deforms, bunches up and then stays in that shape until the next shift.

Thanks for the help, guys.

Matt

[intofx]

Here's a quicktime of the version I'm working on. Hope this works. I loved macs until I bought one.

It's geocities, so you'll have to copy and paste the URL. If you need an AVI version, let me know and I'll post it.

http://geocities.com/intofxpics/shifter2.mov

Matt

[intofx]

Here's the AVI. Once again it is geocities so copy and paste the link.

www.geocities.com/intofxpics/shifter2.avi

Let me know what you think.

matt

[cgolchert]

Geocities was bogged down. It told me it would be a 28 minute download...so I didn't see it yet.

This is what I was going to post before.

I hope the frame rate doesn't get screwed up on this one....

[HowardM]

ooooh both of you! settings!
:)

[intofx]

HowardM I'll post settings ASAP but my hard drive went south this weekend so I'm dealing with that. :( Luckily I heard the drive clunking so, I copied all of my improtant files to a Firewire drive before the crash.

Another question... With MD should I eventually freeze my mesh or is acceptable to leave it as NURBS? I think it looks pretty good AS IS but is there any benefit in freezing it? The longer render times with the frozen model aren't appealing to me either.

Thanks,

Matt

[HowardM]

hmm, Im not sure, Ive never frozen them...so I guess its fine.

[cgolchert]

I'll have to find the mesh I used since I weighted the bones as well.

Not freezing your mesh allows you to change the rez at any time. There should really be no reason to freeze it unless the "freezing subpatch" part of the render kills you.