Cineversity

Does anyone know how to make a detailed yarn like material weaving itself like they do in this Nike commercial? https://vimeo.com/73986114
I am thinking something along the lines of using tracers and hair but I am trying to think of a technique that won’t completely kill my render time.

Hi JessWThomas,

I have no insider knowledge (to this clip), so I might be wrong. :o)

Think of the yarn as a long (vs hight) animated 2D clip of these yarns. These are then formed along a spline. [Spline Wrap and Rail.] Perhaps two of them layered to increase the visual eye-candy/complexity. The spline could be generated by Tracer or any Formula option, or even the Formula Spline could be helpful here. It looks like the tip of the “image” is scaled down. These clips are produced with the final camera view and light direction in mind!

If you want to explore, go image by image, where the yarn goes out of the image [left upper corner, time 00:13] and the second before that. There should be a visible parallax! But none is visible to me by looking it frame by frame.

As usual, and people ignore my suggestion here typically—but there is a lot of editing in it, and the ignorance comes mostly from the fact that good editing is invisible. When the image get from over to under, I could think of a “cut” and change of texture/animation clip, to hide the edit and change. I think the quality of the yarn changes even—it looks much sharper tehn. So obvious. (I love intelligent set up in that way, BTW, if it is in that way… ;o)) This is as old as Hitchcock movies ;o) Speaking of which, it is what we believe to see or even expect. not what the 3D scene is really all about. As I also mention more than often, we work like a magician, we need to know what we can do to create the illusion, anything more is a waste of time and money. Editing, Motion Blur, Flare, and atmospheric dust and all of that with neat camera moves, this helps to sell it, from where I look at it.

To produce these animation you need to set up something, and that is used then in the very foreground. As there we need some parallax. Even here, we could do it once (or twice for left to right and for the back to front yarn) and camera map it on a animated tube (Sweep).

Besides that, I would see only “render Instances” as option, if we talk about limited (as most of us might have) render capacities.

All the best

P.S.: here is a little sketch of the idea which I have described above. Some more work is needed, but perhaps this is an answer to the initial question.

The file _01 is for the animation clip production. The Particles are only there to produce a falloff source for the Random Effector. Note that the Random Effector is set here as a Deformer for points only. In that way the Product of the Tracer is more “alive”. To have more variety in it, I duplicated the Tracer set up and produced the Yarn with two similar source.

The file _02 uses the product of _01 and is as well only a sketch. I added some light and dust to it, as well an Environment to give it a little bit “depth/space. You might have better ideas. Again: this is a sketch.

A short 1.5 second clip is here: [frame 45-90 of file _02]
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/gGvgW8NfC3U2fEmDvlNzkmbbgtusT5kcJT3JxKSsvMX?ref_=cd_ph_share_link_copy
Perhaps download it, so you can scrub through it more easily.

Let me know if there is a question. :o)

My best wishes for the project.

Dr. Sassi You are a champion!
I am processing it now, and figuring out how to format this in the way I am going to use it. I am using this technique to build up a logo.

I started out by using a matrix object on a sphere and moving it along a spline with a tracer object on that, but when I duplicate it to make the grid it is exponentially slower to edit.

What did the Yarn Dummy Texture look like? The second example won’t render without that texture.

Thank you very much, JessWThomas, for the nice feedback.

Yes, with each copy you might add a lot of data. You can check that with the: Object Manager>Object>Object or Project Information. There is as well an option to have those data as HUD visible in your editor window.

You certainly see what you do, but Matrix/Sphere/Tracer to build a logo leaves a lot of space to imagine nearly everything. Sorry, that is difficult to pin point for me. Any sketches?

The “Dummy Texture” is the result of file …_01 and since it was 122MB large, I though you could render it out perhaps much quicker than I upload it and you download it then. Anyway, here it is:
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/bwybVA6UWhxhRd46iYUoMXmcRxwdPTlwl8AK6SSqkem?ref_=cd_ph_share_link_copy

If you can’t share the files in public, please let me know, you always can upload it to, e.g., Dropbox, and share the link via Private Message here, So I can see it and share what ever I can think of alternative ways to do it. (Since you asked for the less computational way to set things up). If there is any chance this mustn’t be private, I would appreciate it, since I believe in the forum and sharing here. But I will find a way to share the idea and not give the logo away, if that is needed.
(Complete Private stuff is not my thing anymore, too much repetition in the past and less help for the C4D artists as group. I have done it several thousand times and not really what I think is worth it for the “community”. :o)

I might need some more info, to check other ways perhaps :o)

My best wishes

Attached is my initial file for creating the weaving strings. As you can see it’s slow to see the simulation, and the detail isn’t quite where I want it to be yet.
Don’t worry about keeping this private, it doesn’t have the logo in it yet.

Thanks for the file, JessWThomas.

If you like to build it with 3D data, here are some thoughts to the file.

The amount of points created are proportional to the speed of your scene. There are two main areas to deal with that. In the Editor view, you will find a Menu>>Options>Level Of Detail. Which allows you to reduce the data in the scene during work, with visible restrictions, but not for the rendering [Picture Viewer].

The other way to optimize the scene is based on the idea what data is really wanted, in other words seen on the end.

You have a Matrix under the Sphere, I guess to influence the structure of the sphere, to have more variety. If you take away the Matrix, and place the Random Effector directly under the Sphere, set to deform, you get the same result. Even if you use an animated version of the Random Effector, as in Attribute manager>>Effector>Random Mode>Noise or Turbulence. This might be a minor savings as we take one step of precessing out. If the Sphere has no need to change the point values over time perhaps use the Object Manager> Object>Current State to Object to have that data already. Not a big savings, but everything counts.

The main slow down comes certainly from the Cloner, but that is based on the Tracer. Check inside of the Tracer is the Attribute Manager>>Object>Sample Steps are really needed to be on “1”, which produces for each frame on spline point per vertices of the sphere. I guess to set the Sphere to less segments is not wanted, but which would greatly reduce the Amount of data, and speed up the scene>
By lowering the Steps only to two, you have half of the data in the scene, and it should be already palpable in the redraw speed.

Inside the Tracer is the option to have the “Intermediate Points” set up. If you have in Steps the parameter ‘1’ you have eight intermediate points per frame, per single spline times the vertices of the sphere times the amount of clones. This formula creates easily huge numbers. So, each part counts. You might check how many intermedia points you need to get to the quality you are after. BTW, Natural as intermediate points seems to be the fastest here. I have set the Editor View so the frames per second show, and after many runs, I can see what is faster. (Many runs, as each computer has back ground tasks and they interfere with the performance) Editor View>>Options>Configure All>>Attribute Manager>HUD. It is the easiest way to see how things perform.

There might be a sweet spot where the quality and the amount of points are in a good balance.

I guess that should be all for this post. I will look into other things, but that might take a while, e.g., options with MoSpline, and perhaps dig a little bit in Hair, to see if there is an option to use a minimal amount of Tracer result and interpolate those. But that needs time to play and explore. IF—I find something—I will share that with you.

My best wishes

As promised, JessWThomas, I looked deeper into this and tried to find a way to keep it now in 3D, as well as low in computation amount.

I mentioned above the options in Hair. As Hair is based on “splines” and the interpolation there of, or just the offset of one spline. the later was the most successful in my exploration. I set up a new way to create the “structure, with just a “Point level Animation”. These are normally hard to control, except when using a Time track. Which I took as Repeat after option, so I was able to shape the “Yarn” more along in length, as it bends more and then less. See the “time track Curve” for more details in the Time Line.

The key is here to have a SINGLE spline per Yarn, and then let Hair produce the “threads” around it. Perhaps do it twice to get more variety.

Open the attached scene, play from frame 0 to nearly the end, and render. Check the main parameters here in Attribute Manager>>Hair> Guides/Hairs [e.g., Roots]

I hope the attached example will speed up your workflow, but I guess it might be slower in rendering than my initial 2D version. You might evaluate now what works best of course for your project!

Keep in mind that you can use the Tracer Spline as well to grow tiny “Hairs” on it, to increase the variety.

Again, my best wishes.

P.S.: Just to be complete, the perhaps way too simple set up. :o)

Thank you for providing all of these options to test out!
The mospline option already looks like a good way to get a far view of the stitching.

I am going to look deeper into how to control the point animation one a little better as well, but I think a combination of the mospline procedure and a tracer with more geometry in the front strands may be where I am heading.

You’re welcome, JessWThomas! :o)

The combination of all these will certainly lead to an unique solution.

As I like to support this, I have attached some more ideas in a sketch file. Please note that the Delay is set too high, just to make a point. ;o)  The main idea was to use a Diplacer and a delay to get that [more] organic built up of the fabric. Again, just a sketch, the timing is a little bit off, but I guess the points are clear when you render a little preview, it is pretty fast.

Enjoy.

You asked for alternative “point moving methods”.

Perhaps that simplifies it. The key is in the Point selection and restriction set up, so the same texture produces the opposite movement. (Texture projection set to Flat!)

Another way, to move points, but normally I hesitate to post those things. Hence why I do it so late.

It is based on a Formula (set to point “Deform”), which moves the point of the amount in the “Parameters”. Either negative or positively.

I did a legal “hack” of the “Frequency-Slider” here, and connected it with the frame number. A full run (first to last frame) needs the spline to be moved over the full length, or full circle. See example, it shows the gap intentionally. I have set the Main Menu>>Animate>Play Mode> Simple, in that way, it runs from the start to the end and stops. So one can convert (made editable) a Tracer copy into a Spline.

The formula ask then if the frame number and the point number (ID) is equally even or odd, which results in an “+1” or “-1”. The Effectors result of the formula, if “1” uses the parameter entries to 100. If -1 then to -100%.

?(mod(id;2)=mod(f;2);1;-1)

? = If routine
mod = modulo divide by and present: “reminder”
id = Spline point number
f = here feed by the XPresso and so “Frame Number”

It reads in this way: if the reminder of “ID divided by 2” is equal to the reminder of “frame divided by 2”, then the result is “+1” otherwise it is “-1”

So, more frames the more points for the Tracer. First and last frame should be odd or even, so there is no gap if a full circle is wanted.

Set the Interpolation in the Tracer to get a smooth curve, e.g. B-Spline and Natural 8.

ENJOY