Floppy Book

[thumperness]

I have a little animation in my head which involves prolly Kee-Kat walking around on a stage, with a book in his hand, giving a short speech. As he moves around, I'd like the soft back book to flop around as a secondary motion. What tools will I be working with to make the book move? Newtons Physics? Weighted CPs? Just wanted to know what to start reading up on.

[robcat2075]

Is the book open? Closed? Is he just waving with it?

[Rodney]

Using dynamics or Newton is tempting here but I like to have full control of effects so I would most likely try it first via Action or Pose.

If pursuing the effect in that way it's mostly a matter of determining what the extremes (or more appropriately the extreme extremes) the floppy book is likely to be conformed to.

Once you've got those figured out, you then can dial in the desired percentage or ease of that pose during your character movement to effect the flopping of the book.

Any final tweaking I'd then probably accomplish via a final pass in yet another Action where I would adjust the mesh (to camera view) while in Muscle Mode.

 

If I knew more about Newton and how to better control it I'd be tempted to use that to create the keyframes of the book's extreme poses.

The approach I would use might be similar to the one I outlined above where I would first determine the direction of the characters main movements and then use those to create the books secondary actions and follow through. In other words I would simulate with Newton, then delete all the unnecessary keyframes (simple is usually more manageable), then adjust the remaining keyframes in time to sync the floppy book with the character's motion.

 

Those would be my initial plans of attack if I was approaching it.

[thumperness]

Is the book open? Closed? Is he just waving with it?

 

Open. Think fire and brimstone preacher...Holding it with his thumb in the middle. quick movements and jabbing motions with the book

[robcat2075]

Is the book open? Closed? Is he just waving with it?

 

Open. Think fire and brimstone preacher...Holding it with his thumb in the middle. quick movements and jabbing motions with the book

 

I've done a shot where the character moved the book and turned a page and the pages were manually animated, but that was a bitch to do.

 

A cloth solution would be my first gambit. I'd make a simple two open pages put of stiff cloth, animate the character gesturing with thatand then when the animation was done, constrain a more fully modeled open book to the two cloth pages.

[robcat2075]

Now that I think about it more maybe an easier option is to rig the sides of the book with dynamic bones. It might just take two or three on each side arranged like bird wings.