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Animating a leather strap on a chest as it closes
I’m making a chest coins will fall into. Once they fall in, the top of the chest closes. I’m good with that. Since the chest is an old wooden chest, I decided to model leather straps with one end nailed to the top, the other nailed to the box.
As the top closes, the straps need to “fold” down into the box.
For the straps, I started with a simple plane, dropped it into hyper nurbs to curve the corners, then into a cloth nurbs to give it depth. That’s the extent of what I know to do (right or wrong), and now I’m somewhat clueless for my next steps.
Before I start getting too deep into trouble, I’d take any advice anyone is willing to give.
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11 Replies
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inner straps that keep the trunk lid from opening too far?
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Yes, exactly… Either I’ve modeled the straps wrong, or I don’t know what tags to use….
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probably cloth with a Belt at either end but can’t test until tomorrow, I’m guessing MoGraph and 12 with the falling coins so maybe a soft body and constraints/hinges etc. too.
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Brian… I’m not getting anywhere.
I tried belting on the strap nails, and adding and animating a sphere as a collider, but when everything moves…the strap stays as rigid as stone.
I’ll try to remodel it a pure cloth rather than cloth nurbs
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cloth nurb just smooths in a way a bit different from a HyperNurb (edges preserved) and it can add thickness but you need it to be cloth or it’s just smoother and thicker. Here’s a test with cloth for a strap (no thickness yet), not perfect but getting the right idea. I’m guessing a dynamics soft body might be better but I just jumped from 10.5 to 12 and I haven’t figured out how to have a hinge move with the trunk lid yet.
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I’m on 10.5, I couldn’t read that file. Did you say you are on 12?
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yeah sorry, 12. I started with soft bodies etc with 12 and moved to the cloth solution in there. I’ll try and do it in 10.5…. ok, same more or less but with a bit of wind to get the strap to go inside reliably. 10.5…
still no thickness, just add a ClothNurb.
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OK… I had stupidly put the belt tags on the nails rather than on the strap itself. I’ve matched up every property of the cloth tags, and removed all other unnecessary elements, nurbs, etc. At least the strap is acting like cloth.
How did you attach the strap to the “attach” points on the lid and base. I tried selecting a point on each and then choosing Structure->Connect, but that didn’t work. The strap just falls away from the nails.
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choose two or more points on the strap that you want attached – I used all three across the strap, you can use one but it is not as stable a join. Then in the Belt tag hit the Set button, the points you selected should turn yellow and will now try to stay attached to whatever object you put in the Belt On slot, at least when the timeline is playing.
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OK… I got it… it took a bit of trial and error, but I finally got it together.
Thanks again, Brian…
Joe
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