Deform forcefield source

[bldpsnmlt]

Hi

I need a force field to keep a mesh in a certain area, but without influencing its properties from the cloth mod too much.

Lets say my scene is a flying carpet and i want to keep it levitating in a natural way. With the cloth mod i want to simulate objects, for example, stones falling onto the carpet, or footsteps or whatever that impacts the carpets cloth behaviour. Then i want to move the carpet around between that certain area. Binding it like the Uconstraint of MassFX with limited transition and spring/damping on.

Accomplished that so far with the spacewarp gravity, but its only available in planar and spherical.

Need something that lets me form the "binding" area

Any other forcefield would do, if they are compatible with cloth modifier.

Best regards

[bldpsnmlt]

Hello

Could i get an answer here, please? Im right in the middle of my project and need to know this to continue or abbandon the idea.

Atleast a "yes possible" or "no impossible" would be appreciated.

[hagen.deloss]

Hi @bldpsnmlt 

Thanks for bringing your question to the forums! Hmmm, i will test a few space warps to see if I can get an example with the cloth modifier working. 

I did a first pass with just an animated noise modifier applied to the mesh, moving the gizmo backwards, here is the result.

Let me know if you want the scene file! I'm using 3ds Max 2019.3, what version are you working with?

Talk soon, 

[hagen.deloss]

Hi @bldpsnmlt 

I wanted to pass along another technique from @ads_royje, here is a screencast outlining how to use an FFD with a cloth modifier applied. 

I hope this helps!

[bldpsnmlt]

Hello hagen.deloss

Thank you for your reply.

I tested the solutions you mentioned, but sadly none of them will work for me.

All i really need is a deformable/shapeable source of a forcefield. Or a custom button to load your shape which the forcefield uses instead:

Like the custom physical shapes of MassFx, that lets you form your own collision shapes and make the simulation use them instead of sphere, box etc. for example.

[bldpsnmlt]

...so i guess there is no way to achieve this?

I honestly thought there was at least a workaround or even a script to achieve this ?basic? method.

Thank you anyway...

[hagen.deloss]

@bldpsnmlt 

Thanks for your patience while I see if any colleagues have other ideas for ya! I will pass anything I get along to you 😄

[martin.coven]

Hi. 

I'd be happy to try to help, but I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to get exactly. Please let me know if this is correct.

You have a flying carpet (floating - defying gravity) You want to move the flying carpet around in space and there will be items falling and hitting it and you want it to react to the collisions, and then go back to the state of defying gravity. Is that right? 

If so, what do you expect the carpet to look like when it is floating? If it's a heavy carpet, it probably doesn't have a lot of fine detail and the collisions will be fairly muted. I am guessing you don't want the carpet to wrap around the falling debris, but to take the impact, deform and 'warp' back. Does this all sound right?

Also, if you have any examples or references to peak at, that would help as well.

Thanks!

Martin 

[bldpsnmlt]

Thank you hagen.deloss

Hi martin.coven and thanks to you for your help. I really appreciate it.

Please forget the carpet example, i tried to explain the matter that way to an user in the general forum.

All i need is pretty much stated in message 5. But let me explain it this way:

On the first pic you see 2 forcefield sources of gravity (front) with their 2 shapes (planar and spherical).

Behind are their equivalent primitives.

2nd pic is what i want to achieve. The forcefield sources to be deformable and shapeable like the primitives. 

Doesnt matter for me how to achieve this. But it should be loadable into cloth group forcefield.

Tried to shape them by using modifiers on the Space Warps, but none worked.

Is there a "convert to Space Warps" or "load custom shape" from geometry option i overlooked? Or is it simply not possible to have other shapes of forcefield sources?

[martin.coven]

I don't think we have any way to shape a force field in the way you are asking. We do have a new force called MotionField which was included with Fluids. It is a generic force that works with everything, and has a geometry option, but that option is only for fluids (I'm 90% sure of that, but will test it).

Thinking out of the box a bit, you could deform a mesh in the way you want and then have another mesh that is constrained to that deforming mesh. I'm not sure if that would get what you want, but from what I understand, that might be the way I would try and approach it.

Martin

[bldpsnmlt]

Wanted to have control over cloth simulated mesh. The constraint-method wont work for me, since its too rigid. If i understand your solution correctly.

Made an example, where i used gravity spheres to move the mesh like a worm does to crawl forward. But it needs quite alot of cloth groups to add for that movement. It kinda works well in this example, but not in my original project, where i need certain shapes of force fields. I hoped there could be a way to add cylindrical or box shaped sources to the force field.

[hagen.deloss]

@bldpsnmlt 

Thanks for the additional information and sample scene! As Martin said, there isn't a way to load custom shapes into a Space warp, except as noted in the Motion Field tool.

I am still having trouble understanding what your desired result is. Instead of examples or demos of the current tools you are using, I think to best help you get the desired effect, describing exactly what you want would be best.

I can see a potential workflow being to bake a simulated animation, and then adjusting the animation via soft selecting polygon groups to deform the object further. But until folks know exactly what your final outcome is, it's all guesswork 😄

Looking forward to talking further!

[bldpsnmlt]

Already mentioned what i want. Shapeable force fields or loading your own mesh shape as a force field. Thats what i was asking for. And as you said, there is no way.

Motion Fields, as martin.coven stated, designed for Fluids and will only work with that. 

The save file should demonstrate, what i intended to do with it. Controlling shape of the cloth simulated mesh. Maybe i should add that my intention with this method is to make animations and not a single picture.

[martin.coven · Accepted solution]

I would add this to the Ideas page. I think this would be really good to have as well.

[Anonymous]

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@bldpsnmlt wrote:

Already mentioned what i want. Shapeable force fields or loading your own mesh shape as a force field. Thats what i was asking for. And as you said, there is no way.

Motion Fields, as martin.coven stated, designed for Fluids and will only work with that. 

The save file should demonstrate, what i intended to do with it. Controlling shape of the cloth simulated mesh. Maybe i should add that my intention with this method is to make animations and not a single picture.

---

This is not entirely correct. MotionField indeed works with cloth but it`s geometry option doesn`t.

Perhaps something to look at for devs since i couldn`t make the geometry option work with ANYTHING(Fluids,Particles) .

Perhaps broken or i`m  stupid.

[bldpsnmlt]

Will do.

You have any advice on how to describe this properly? Because it looked like i couldnt entirely explain the matter.

[bldpsnmlt]

Only thing i could do with MotionField is to load it as a Force with the Cloth modifier. But it affects nothing, no matter what.

As you said: Perhaps broken or i`m stupid.

[hagen.deloss · Accepted solution]

Adding my 2 cents, i think you did a good job describing it when you said "Shapeable force fields or loading your own mesh shape as a force field."

I would say something like "the ability to load a custom shape/container as a space warp, with the ability to influence cloth and other physics objects", or something to that affect.

[bldpsnmlt]

Alright will do so.

Thank you very much!