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Erratic behaviour of connector dynamic
I’ve got a dynamic connector that I set up without problems. It’s controlling a piece of card with writing on that is held in place by a pin in only one corner. The card falls and rotates with the pin as the centre of rotation. Then the card then falls down by gravity when I disable the connector (pin falls out).
The problem is that I want to delay the start and also that I want to set up other cards doing the same thing, later in time.
As soon as I set a keyframe to delay the start (in Dynamics/general setting) the preview starts to behave erratically. When I hit play the first time it’ll look right, but after that my objects seem to randomly change position, like be halfway through the rotation as soon as the dynamics start. It’ll render all right but I can’t see what I’m doing to set things up.
Things get worse if I try to bring in other cards and try to animate the dynamics on and off. Objects start to fly around nonsensically. And sometimes objects seem to get new positions and I have to replace them back where they were manually rather than by undoing.
I was wondering if it was to do with graphics card settings.
Thanks if anyone knows anything. I’m a relevant noobie so don’t know the finer points.
John
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4 Replies
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it might be where you are placing the keyframes and the shape of the F-Curve between the Off and On keyframes – might have to see the file
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Thanks for thinking about this. This is a stripped down project with just two editable objects:
11351_connectorwithdelay.c4d.zip
The first time I hit play, the dynamics might play and loop correctly but if I stop and maybe click around the timeline before going back to 0, it start to glitch when it hits the dynamics enable keyframe.
I also tested it on a laptop (rebuilding the project from scratch) and it does the same thing. It’s probably something to do with the way I’m setting things up. Like I say, it will render OK, but in my larger project I need to be able to see the previews.John
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en/dis-abling Dynamics in the projects settings is not the way to go at all (particularly if you want to do staggered objects later). Remove that and keyframe in the dynamics tag on the card (Cube in this case) and, in this case, either keyframe the Enabled parameter (unchecked/checked) or the Dynamic parameter (Off/On) when you want the cube to start swinging.
Dynamics will always require you going back to the beginning of the timeline unless you Cache the dynamics (Dynamics Tag/Cache) – there are options in there to cache all dynamic objects or only ‘this one’. Cached dynamics will play like you want and you will be able to scrub through.Here’s an example with two cards, the left one is not cached and starts at frame 31 and the right one is cached and starts at frame 60. If you play it all should be ok but if you scrub through only the right one should work correctly.
11355_connectorwithdelay2.c4d.zip
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Thanks so much Brian.
Someone on C4D Cafe forum had suggested keyframing Enabled/disabled in project settings and so I started that way and that it got horribly messy. Didn’t appreciate the difference between enabling/disabling and turning dynamics on and off.
Brilliant. Feel like I’m over the hump now. I’m learning C4D after many years of editing and using After Effects and I think it’s so amazing to be able to create things out of absolutely nothing. The dynamics are incredible, easier than writing AE expressions to do the same thing.
Thanks again.
John
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