5/16/11

ncloth tutorial-Create a stunning Text effect

Autodesk Maya have a very powerful ncloth system. Ncloth can be used for different types of effects such as clothing, flags, rigid bodies, soft bodies etc.
In this tutorial I am showing a special use of Maya ncloth. Ncloth is a powerful tool. It can be used for any kind of dynamics effects from rigid body to soft body. You may familiar with the regular clothing of a character with the ncloth. This tutorial is at an intermediate level but the novice user can learn the procedure if watched carefully.
Parts covered.
  • Splitting a poly object into individual ncloth object.
  • Adding fields to the ncloth.
  • Caching the ncloth.
  • Tweaking the cache file to look the effect in a better way.
Texturing and rendering part is avoided because this is meant only for the effect animation.



    ncloth tutorial
  • Create a text using text tool in Maya with poly options selected (counts 100 and quad options selected).
  • Delete the history and the output curves.
  • Now assign a shader and texture it.
  • Centre pivot the whole group and individual polys.
  • Move the text above the grid plane.
  • Freeze transforms the group.
  • Now go to ndynamics menu and apply ncloth to the individual letters.(simply drag them in view port and assign the ncloth).
  • Right click on the time liner and select “play every frame-maximum real-time” option.
  • Play the animation.
  • Now the texts freely fall. To get a collision ground, simply turn on the “use grid plane” in the nucleus attribute.
  • Now play the stimulation. You will get a nice effect. To add little bit movement simply turn on wind in nucleus attribute and change the axis to Z.
  • Optionally select all the ncloth and add a turbulence field with attenuation zero.
  • Play again.
  • Now we need the splittable mesh. So simply select all the text and add a tearable constraint from ndynamics menu. Select the dynamic constrain and set the glue strength to zero.
  • Play again. Now you get the pretty text effect.
  • Simple select all the text and create a ncache up to 100 frames with “cache each geometry and per frame attributes selected.
  • Now is the trick.
  • Select the text and go to polygon menu and give extrude.
  • I hope you have understood the procedure well.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great tutorial. Thanks a lot!!!

Anonymous said...

i like it...great job dude...

willy said...

Great ideas, thanks!!! I will follow you

Anonymous said...

Is it possible to pause time, like the letters explode and pause time, while the camera moves around and and stop, and continues from the exploding to another text

FermiCG said...

Yes

Anonymous said...

THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!
:-D
very good tut but only if sound was there I could be much mode understandable in the last part!

I got it! thanks:-D