Cineversity

Hello,
I’m looking for a way I can animate one object to have it affect another via collision or mesh-deformation.

See attached screenshot for reference.

Basically, I need to animate a lung’s effect on the diaphragm, or the diaphragm’s effect on the lung.

Normally, I can fake this with some trickery using the bulge deformer, but now I need to find a way to connect the geometry, so that one pushes/pulls on the other when I deform them, or move points in a PLA animation.

—It’s sort of the opposite of the Shrink deformer in that I want the second object to shrink when the first expands.  - or something like that.

Let me know if I’m missing something simple…

3rd party plugins are an option, but haven’t found anything that seems right yet.

Thanks in advance for your time/thoughts.

Cheers,
Jamie

Hi Jamie,

The first idea is a joint base solution, to have the animation that moves the the contact area into the other is the same that moves the second object.

A little bit simpler, and more flexible to animate (in this case and from my point of view) would be the Spline Deformer with a weight map. You might change the Spline shape to your needs, a circle-primitive is the easiest way to explore that.

Have a look to the attached file. I’m certain you need to test this if it works for you, the key is the weight and in the Spline Deformer the “Radius”. The Spline interface in r13 makes it even more attractive.

All the best

Sassi

P.S. press play to see the simple example animation.

Good thinking. One of these will definitely do what I need. .

I was playing with the FFD deformer - got pretty close to what I wanted with that.

Thanks for the quick reply Captain!

Cheers,
jamie

Hi jamie,

You’re welcome. Yes the FFD is always to consider in those cases. Especially in combination with the PoseMorph set to points. In that way you gain a lot of control after the “key” poses for the FFD are set.

I like the “weight&restriction;” combination since long (a decade? it was r7 I guess, hehe), for all kind of deformer work, even as modeling tool.

All the best

Sassi

Just to toss it out there, but you can also use the collision deformer which does just this.
It doesn’t give the same control…and it can be slower (the simulation takes time on more complex meshes)...but you can give it a shot

I’m about to step out but I’ll post a quick file when I get back.