Cineversity

I’m using a hair object and a feather object to get some feathers and dynamics working. When the body of the object moves the feathers rotate away from the direction of travel. Is there a way to prevent this? I want the flat side of the feathers always facing forward. I’m noticing that the rotation will snap from 0 to 90 and back for like 1 frame. Kinda glitching out.

scene file:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/30985024/feather.c4d

Hi ryanc,

There is certainly no option in Hair, nor in Feather to prevent that, AFAIK.

However, to get your scene working, I tired to find a way to “re-genrate” your hair-spline. The MoSpline refused to do so, but the MoTracer showed me a stable result.
The Alignment function in Hair>Generate has obviously no power over this.

Here is the file:
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/BDKLJ2PJfqDq0Adj7EUGCvnF6PODpPJ66h4e046Zmzl?ref_=cd_ph_share_link_copy

All the best

Ah tracer, I didn’t even think to use that. awesome, thanks for the setup I will probably use that solution.

Edit: when I apply the tracer the feather strands get all rotated. What am I doing wrong?
http://i.imgur.com/YUPPS1H.png

also, I feel like I figured it out with mospline using spline, which seems to be stable as well, but now I’m running into the problem of getting each feather to be a different color. How would I accomplish that? I suppose that’s a separate question.

Here is new project file:
Thanks
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0cOa0qyJ2bSYVBWcVlORTVzamM

Hi ryanc,

Thanks for the file. (Little request, please only the parts needed for the question)

The Feather Objects have a build in UV space. With that each Feather will look like the same as any other with the same material.
I’m not aware that there is a stable option for that. I tried to use the “Projector Shader” but as expected the colors are “floating”.
The Variation Shader, which has a UV function, is not working here either. So, no luck.

Perhaps I miss something. So far no luck to use the Feather as Generate>Type: Instance in Hair. Which would make perhaps the most sense.

I have attached one of my explorations, but on the end, for separate and stable colorization, single feathers are needed.
File
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/G1XMiKNDu7PXzovA93ymmragOymczb5hJ6lpTtIag6K?ref_=cd_ph_share_link_copy
The antenna/IK set up is discussed here:
https://www.cineversity.com/vidplaytut/character_rigging_in_r12_antenna_ik

All the best

Excellent, thank you very much for the help! Any idea why when I used the tracer the barbs are all rotated?

You’re very welcome, ryanc!

The options for feather are pretty limited and not easy to workaround those limitations.

I think the Variation Shader would be a great way to improve that, if it would made compatible.

All the best

Wow, super quick reply, thanks. I tried to edit my post but couldn’t do it fast enough. Any guesses as to why when I used the tracer the barbs are all rotated?

Thanks for the question, ryanc.

Typically the Splines do not provide a direction while looking perpendicular to the spline path. The typical solution is a second spline used as rail, or just the simple setting of an Alignment options, like an “Up-Vector Y”.
All of that is not given in feathers. Hair has an option, but that is obviously not well communicated to the Feathers, if hair is used as Spline Generator for Feathers as in one example of yours.
So, the Euler Angle is to blame here, or the lack of counter options here.

Feathers, and I might be wrong here, come ever one to two years into the forum and then vanish again. It is like a plug in onto of hair. (Make Feathers editable [press c] to see what I mean.)
With its low usage, other parts of C4D got more development time, as a stronger interest is also shown in the “Suggestions” at MAXON, in my opinion.

All the best

Interesting. Thanks very much for the insight.

For anyone searching in the future:

I got what seems to be stable results using “simple” mospline and 1 hair per color. Although other suggestions exist in this thread.
Here is the project file I will probably move forward with for reference.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/30985024/feather-mospline.c4d

My best wishes for your project.

ryanc - 11 February 2017 07:15 PM

Interesting. Thanks very much for the insight.

For anyone searching in the future:

I got what seems to be stable results using “simple” mospline and 1 hair per color. Although other suggestions exist in this thread.
Here is the project file I will probably move forward with for reference.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/30985024/feather-mospline.c4d

Thanks for sharing the final result,

one thing you should change is the HairObject priority to -1!because there is a little offset at the beginning of the animation.

Walter

Yes, Walter, Priorities!, priorities and again. More than often the last little step to make things perfect.