Cineversity

I need to animate a towel as if it is being twirled at a sporting event… but it needs to move fluidly and as cloth like as possible with give etc… Any suggestions? I appreciate your help!
Similar to the implied motion in the attached still.
Ben

What version of C4D are you using?  If you have access to the cloth tools, the solution is quite easy.  It can, of course be done without said tools, but knowing where you are coming from will help in guiding you down the right path.

Cheers,
- Will

Hi Will sorry about the vagueness of the post very important info required indeed! I started playing with the cloth in 12 and attached is what I have so far…

The problems I have are 2 fold:
1 I need it to be more “clothlike” and not rubbery and super elastic.
2 I need it more consistent almost loopable if possible… 

Below in the link is where I am so far… Not super versed in dynamics or cloth so any help or light you can shed is VERY appreciated!

Link to file:
https://www.yousendit.com/download/M3Bua3NmYWJ5UkVkVU1UQw

Cheers!
Ben

Hi Ben,

Cloth is more for ... well cloth, but a good start, especially when a loop is wanted. In fact is is more like a flag waving in the wind with some turbulence wind from the side. Centrifugal powers version rotation and inertia.  But once you have the flag waving, rotate it. The loop could be done with an Animation Clip.

I have attached a sketch based on your file. Sketch means here, that it certainly need the “time” to be animated smoothly.

You will find a Null object that rotates the whole thing. This could be more animated already, following the hand of a “towel mover”, here it is simp lied.

The other null named with a number is an summery of the four states that I have used here, it should show you always a 1.0 (100%), to have not weird towel stretches.

So animated the rotation first and the time for one loop (360*(loopframes+1)/loopframes) linear, then the states of the towel based on the sliders of the PoseMorph.

Again this is a sketch and needs the hand of an animator that likes to invest more time than I have for that example.

If all sliders are to zero, then you can comfortably texture the “towel”

I have tested a little bit and a wave deformer with some adjustments creates just a nice “distortion” to the over all movement. There are more options to move points… to get the detail moves.

All the best

Sassi

Sorry file is too large I can’t compress it smaller.

https://files.me.com/dr_sassi/oy1gpm

Here is the file (service ends in june for this file)

If you have a reference clip, which can be done even with an iPhone, you can get a better resembling of the “Key Positions” as I have used in the example above just your cloth file.
I forgot to mention that you certainly should use Motion Blur for that, which means a lot of the motion might be more believable. As a side note, sometimes these tiny details can work as practical footage, with a key able background and a similar light and angle. It is not a C4D solution, but I’m used to think more “cross-media”.

I have never really animated using the “states of deformation” VERY cool I will see how I can work on this moving forward… Thanks for your help very nice!
Ben

Hi Ben,

Thanks for the reply. The more control one can gain, the more work might appear to get the controls managed. However, there are more advanced controls in the Character “tool box”, to get the sliders more comfortable to manage.  “Driver” as a tag can work wonders to simplify otherwise complex controls. Just a thought.

The field of 3D is always based on a mix of procedurals (based on former experiments) and new explorations of the tools. Like experimenting with a low resolution “soft body” to influence this with some “forces” and use it then (eventually baked) as base for an surface deformer and get the details maybe with some other techniques. Low resolutions can work great as well with Cloth, but only if you check out the options in the Cloth Cache Tool. The cloth needs to be set up as not “stretchy”.

Edit: a Pose Morph animation placed into a Spline Wrap and the Rail.Spline animated in a way that it resembles the “bending rolling” (wrong term perhaps) of the towel close to the hand.

Good luck

Sassi