Newbie Question: Attaching Speaker Rubber Surrounds

[Brian Jones]

create a Loft between splines which are placed exactly on the box and speaker (and one between for the half-circle shape) – the spline near the box does not move and the spline attached to the speaker follows the speaker with xpresso.
Or make the speaker part of the box (model it all as one object – or at least the part the speaker sits in) and move the speaker with a joint (character tools) and control only the speaker moving (with the surround moving full->none) with the joint with vertex weights.

[Brian Jones]

ah, better than bones moving the speaker (one piece speaker or at least speaker cone/rubber/mount all one piece) Sound Effector (in Point mode) with a cylindrical falloff enclosing only the cone and falling off through the rubber. Much easier to set up.

[Marc Walker]

Thanks Brian, These are all great suggestions.

When I read your first reply, I actually tried it out(but with additional splines for the rubber’s curve) , and with some relative individual movement to the intermediate splines via Xpresso it did act correctly.

But in the interest of learning, I want to try your second(well, third) answer, using points with Sound Effector.

However, I am stuck trying to model the speaker cone, rubber and box as a single object; when I [Mesh>Conversion>Connect] objects, they get placed in the same polygon object but are still seperate polygon groups. Is there a way to really connect them together, so that they are actually joined polygons?

As an example, i will mention that when I wanted circular air holes in the box, I attempted to do so by creating a simple disc, then placing it on the box where I wanted the hole, then Connecting the box and disc objects and then deleting the polygons from the disc(in the new object) so I would be left with a perfect circular hole in the box. Needless to say; it didn’t work. The disc polygon group was just deleted and the box was still in one peice. I thought this ‘merging’ of objects would be an easy process in 3D design software. But then I also thought creating a hole in an object would be easy. Huh.

Thanks,
Marc

[Brian Jones]

way late, I lost this being busy for a while and you’ve probably long ago solved it but FWIW…
Of course in a regular speaker it’s really only the speaker and it’s frame (as well as the rubber surround) that need to be one piece to use a Sound Effector as a deformer (with falloff controlling what moves) – I tried bones but they are hard to control apparently, I was getting results in the viewport but not in render, there may be some reason it’s not working but I couldn’t find it.

9191_speakermotiontrial.c4d.zip have to add your own sound file into the Sound Effector

As to holes, Booles are easy and another way is a script called Points To Circle which is great for making circular holes (or extrusions, particularly if a SubD can be used to smooth things after (getting hard to find but I see a dl here https://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=5433159&amp%3bpostcount=3 and here’s a tutorial about a different way – https://lesterbanks.com/2012/11/creating-a-perfect-circle-for-a-hole-on-a-surface-in-cinema-4d-easily/

[Marc Walker]

Wow, thanks for the project file. I wish I’d seen that before! I just couldn’t get it to work smoothly with the effector. You’ve got it working great.
I ended up using Splines, which worked well, but I’m fussy, so it was a lot of work, you should see how many expression nodes I used to get it right. I did add other things though, like variable vibration, to get the speaker moving more.

Thanks for your help; I learned a lot.

Marc