• Maxon Cinema 4D

  Keyframe Soft Body Dynamics?

  Posted by Stephen Turcotte on July 21, 2011 at 3:19 pm

  I’ve been playing with Soft Body Dynamics wonder if there’s a way to keyframe movement with a bouncing ball. Ideally the ball would bounce using the Soft Body tag, but I would have control over which way it bounces and for how long. In the end I would like to have the ball bounce across a room.

  I realize this can be done with the squash and stretch function, but Soft Body could produce a quicker and more satisfying end result.

  Any ideas?

  Thanks!

  Pravin Chottera replied 11 years, 8 months ago 4 Members · 6 Replies
• 6 Replies

• 

  Adam Trachtenberg

  July 21, 2011 at 8:33 pm

  No, you can’t control a physical simulation with keyframes, except to keyframe the simulation parameters. There is also the “force” setting which allows you to blend simulation and mograph animation.
• 

  Bill Kelly

  July 21, 2011 at 9:43 pm

  You could try turning Dynamic to OFF while still keeping the Soft Body tag Enabled, and use a Collider tag on the floor. Then keyframe the movement of your ball around the scene. Not sure this will work but you could give it a shot.
• 

  Stephen Turcotte

  July 22, 2011 at 1:24 pm

  Thank you both for your input. I did try your idea Bill, but I have yet to find a smooth result with this method. I’ll play around with a few other settings and let you guys know if I find a better solution.

  Thanks!
• 

  Bill Kelly

  July 22, 2011 at 9:57 pm

  Another thing you could try would be to use an Attractor placed above the ball that you keyframe the strength of and its position to move the ball around the room.

  Take a look at this tutorial by Nick from GreyscaleGorilla to see how the Attractor works.

  https://greyscalegorilla.com/blog/2011/02/how-to-animate-and-control-lights-and-dynamics-with-xpresso-in-cinema-4d-part-1/
• 

  Stephen Turcotte

  July 24, 2011 at 1:07 pm

  Thanks so much, very exciting. I’ll check that out this morning.
• 

  Pravin Chottera

  August 14, 2014 at 6:42 pm

  I know this is a very old post and may have been answered in other places, but you can keyframe the movement of ball and then turn on Dynamics with the Follow Position parameter set to a value greater than 0.

  The ball will then use the position keyframe data for movement, but Cinema will still respect the soft body collisions.

  Using attractors would take a lot of tweaking to move the ball the way you want it to, but I’d love to see the results you were able to achieve. Maybe the bounce movement would be more realistic.

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