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constraining a boat to an ocean surface using HOT4D plugin
Hi – I’m using an ocean generator plugin called HOT4D and I am trying to constrain a boat to the ocean surface using a constraint tag set to clamp and then using the ocean surface as a target.
The boat either gets constrained 1 metre above the ocean or else it gets covered in water….I’ve been trying all possible combinations in the constraint/clamp settings to get it right but I’m considering animating the boat manually at this stage. If anyone has tried something similar before or can offer any advice I’d really appreciate it. I’ve attached the file. (I should point out that I’ve used mograph on the ocean surface to make a bigger water area so it takes a minute to open up).
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9 Replies
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for starters your Constraint/Basic/Priority should be set to Generators so it will follow a deformed surface but outside of that I don’t see how any boat be done with less than 2 (and preferably more) constraints as a single constraint always makes the boat too ‘rocky’ – too much a slave to a single normal/surface point about which to rotate and give height information. I have not implemented such a thing myself but it has to be better than the usual – though the hyper-subdividing you have going on in this one helps no doubt with a single constraint. If I get enough time I’ll try a double constraint and average them, if I get something promising I’ll post it.
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Thanks for th info Brian – if you get a chance that would be great.
Joey -
Hi Brian – I keyframed that manually and got the results I wanted…should have done that earlier – I’d have saved 3 days stress…thanks anyways.
Its at the end of this clip (password is turbine)
https://vimeo.com/home/myvideos -
good solution, I started a trial on trying to get a two null boat to work but haven’t been able to get back to it. I will post it if I do get some useful results.
The link only took me to Vimeo but I did search for you and the Samsung logo came out nicely, I had only seen the single letter prior to that 🙂 -
Hi Brian – glad you liked the Samsung ident.
This is the correct link i should have sent:
https://vimeo.com/79144228 (password is turbine….c4d animation is at the end) -
just found out something, if you put a PointCache tag on the ocean with Use Deformer checked and Store and Calculate in the normal fashion the Constraint tag on the ‘boat’ becomes predictable and behaves like it is supposed to. Still not perfect boat behaviour but not the same oddness you (and I) were seeing
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Thanks for keeping me updated Brian – appreciate your help.
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Hi Joey,
Found this trying to solve my own problems. Wanted to know how you got Hot4D out the the horizon… are you simply faking it, keeping the camera low to the water surface, or have you found a nice way to get the water out that far?
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Hi James – I used a mograph cloner on the ocean (6 x 1 x 8).
It really slows down my machine so I have to get the water looking ok on its own in a separate file and then in my main animation use dummy planes to see where the water is going to be). Before I render I delete the dummys and copy paste the water into the main file……in render mode it doesn’t crash but if I play around with it in c4d in can crash when not rendering. THIS IS NOT AND IDEAL METHOD THOUGH!!! It really slowed down my work process and I think I would consider using a different work around the next time…..
Two other things I did were to scale down the size of my objects so that the ocean surface would be greater….I also used a strong depth of field with my exported depth map in after effects so that the edge of the ocean/horizon isn’t obvious. I hope this helps!
Joey
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