Cinema 4D Tutorial - Creating Soft Body Dynamic Strings Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

hey everybody its EJ from I design comm
and today we're gonna make some silly
string using a little overlooked feature
in soft body dynamics let's learn how so
this is what I was trying to describe
and I'm just gonna I'm just decided I'm
gonna call this spaghetti from the sky
and what I use to create this is a
probably very underused option in the
soft body engine and that is called made
of clones so let me just break down what
that key feature does so let's just go
ahead and what I'm going to do is create
a cloner I'm going to create a sphere
and I'm going to clone this sphere in a
grid array let's just make this sphere a
little bit smaller say 27 I don't know
why I chose 27
I'm just feeling 27 today so what I'm
going to do is just make this sphere or
this grid array 10 by 10 and just
increase the size here so that none of
our spheres are overlapping all right so
what we're going to do now is apply a
soft body dynamics tag to this cloner
object now typically in soft bodies you
normally don't even mess with clones or
anything you typically just apply it to
a sphere or something like that and turn
it into more of like a soft pillowy a
jello like object and that's via making
the springs that basically make the soft
body dynamics work made up of polygons
and lines now if you're not familiar
with soft body dynamics please check out
my intro to soft body dynamics to get a
better feel for what this tutorial is
going over because we're kind of
building upon that knowledge
of just general soft body dynamics so
with soft body dynamics we have these
Springs and basically these Springs are
what control the gelatinous nature or
the soft nature of the of your geometry
and all these Springs are connected by
polygons and lines but there's also
another option where you can actually
make clones and build Springs between
those clones so what does that mean well
if I change this to native clones
what I can then do is let me just move
this up and what I need to do to kind of
just demonstrate what's going to happen
is create a Collider object so what I'm
going to do is just create a sphere and
for this to be a Collider body I
actually need to refer it to be
recognized in the dynamic simulation I
have to go to simulation tags and just
apply a glider body to this so this is
going to just be collided into it's just
going to stay stationary and if I hit
play so I got my soft body dynamics AG
on my cloner it's made of clones I'm
going to hit play and you're gonna see
it just acts like a stiff rigid board
and that's because we need to go a few
more steps to actually prepare this soft
body dynamics tag to kind of fully use
this made of clones options so we need
to go into our collider tag or a
collision tab right here and first thing
I need to do is actually say I need this
soft body dynamics to be applied to the
children which is basically all these
spherical clones so what I'm going to do
is just turn that on to apply tag the
children I need to do one other step to
make this made of clones work and that
is to tell this that I need to use the
top level of the cloner basically all
those spheres as individual or to be
treated as individual elements because
right now it's just being treated as one
stiff board and not individual spheres
so I'm going to change this to top level
and you can immediately see it's way
more wobbly and looks pretty dang cool
now right now so what's happening with
this is again instead of using polygons
and lines to create those soft body
Springs it's actually making Springs
between and connecting all these clones
together which is really cool so what we
can do to make this a little bit more
viscous like fluid like I showed right
off the top is by removing a lot of
these structural Springs so basically
these three types of Springs here the
structural shear and flexing on a go a
little bit over them in the intruder
intro to soft body dynamics tutorial I
did previously but basically the more
Springs the more stiff the objects are
going to be so if I remove Springs say I
just remove Springs in the shear and
flexing on you're going to see this is
going to have a lot more give and this
is going to act more like cloth and this
is pretty much what we're going for here
so we have a lot of structural Springs
with no shear and no flexing and we got
this really nice fluid cloth type of
effect so this is kind of getting close
to what I wanted the feel that I want
for like fluid so let's just go ahead
and what I need to do instead of using a
grid array I actually need some things
that's going to emit these spheres and
create more like a like water from water
faucet or something like that so what
I'm going to do is create an emitter and
actually emit these spheres so what I'm
going to do is go from a grid array to
object in clone spheres these soft body
spheres onto the emitter so what you're
going to see now I can get rid of my
clewd collider sphere here so I got my
emitter right here and you're going to
see it's going to emit all these clones
that are connect
did buy those soft body Springs right so
what I'm going to do is to create my
spaghetti from this guy I'm just going
to rotate my emitter move it up and now
these Spears are just going to drop and
since they're connected by those Springs
they're going to kind of go all over the
place because you can see that all these
all these spheres are all over the place
there's a lot of points being emitted a
lot of particles being emitted and what
I'm going to do is just bring this
emitter above the cloner because in the
hierarchy in the hierarchy we actually
need stuff to be emitted and then we can
actually clone onto it later
just the level of priority here and what
I want to do so this is a nice steady
stream is go to my emitter options and
make the emitter size way smaller so now
everything's just kind of being emitted
from a tiny tiny emitter right there and
you can see that things are still
looking kinda goofy and that's because
we have too many particles being emitted
at once so what I need to do is bring
that down and I think what I need to do
even further is remove more of those
Springs because right now there's too
many Springs and this these spheres are
kind of bunching up together so what I'm
going to do is just bring the structural
down to one and you're going to see that
this is way more viscous and I can
actually go up to my emitter here and
try to up this a little bit so as long
as these fears aren't bumping into each
other I can up this as much as I want
you can see that if I bring the
birthrate up too much you're going to
see spheres kind of bump into each other
right from the get-go and it creates
this kind of wavy kind of look which
actually you know for liquid you might
be wanting that but I'm just going to
make sure that this is low enough that
none of these spheres are getting
emitted and colliding into one another
so now it's a nice
except for that little first bit we have
this nice stream of spheres and let's
just up the speed speed a little bit to
just to try to prevent any spheres from
getting collided into right off the bat
that's looking good let's see if I can
get away with upping this one more
particle per second
I think that's looking good so we have a
steady stream of spheres let's go ahead
and create our disk to act as a floor so
we can have all these spheres that are
connected by this the soft body springs
collide into the ground so let's go to
simulation collider body and you can see
right away that all these spheres are
connected by a single spring so they're
basically creating like a bead necklace
or something like that where they're all
connected together and as they fall on
the floor they still maintain that
springy connection so this is exactly
what we want now the only thing is is
that we need to create a dynamic spline
from this that we can then sweep
geometry on to to create our little
spaghetti piece so these spheres are
going to be a very important part
because they have the dynamics applied
to them they have the springs connected
and they're going to help us generate a
dynamic spline based off this so what
I'm going to do is to connect all these
spheres together and try to create a
spline off of them I'm going to go ahead
and create a tracer object now what I'm
going to do is I need to place the
cloner in that trace link and if I turn
off my my cloner there
the visibility you can see that it's
actually tracing the path of all these
spheres so we're getting all this pretty
cool like generative almost looks like
tree branches or something like that but
I actually don't want to do that I just
want to connect those objects so just
like the cloner is connected by those
soft body Springs I want to connect
those objects together and create one
uniform spline you can see that we're
generating this kind of
chunky rigid a spline and that's because
I need to add some intermediate points
to smooth that out so I'm just going to
go and choose adaptive and let's just
choose a cubic to kind of smooth that
out and then I can bring the angle down
you can see as I bring the angle of this
down it's going to create more points
and smooth out that spline so now we
have one strand of spaghetti and it's
got all the soft body Springs created by
all these clones being connected by
these Springs I want to cover one
important thing because this will not
work if the tracer is actually below the
cloner and what I'm going to show you is
just turn off the cloner you're going to
see that the tracer is just emitting and
it's just going straight through the
ground so it's just because of the order
of operations here that the tracer needs
to be above the cloner for this to work
so very important all right so let's go
ahead and we have our nice dynamics a
like spaghetti spline what we're going
to do to create some geometry off of
this is to use a sweep object so let's
go to sweep and we're going to place our
tracer spline under that sweep and then
all we need to do is define a profile
spline that we can sleep sweep along
this tracer and I'm just going to use a
circle for that so how the sweep object
works is the you need to have the
profile spline first and then the object
to sweep it along so the circle is way
big so I'm just going to shrink this
down a little bit you can see now we
have our nice little spaghetti now the
key to trying to prevent the this
geometry from intersecting with one
another is to make sure that the radius
is the same size of the radius of the
sphere that we use to clone on so let's
just do like 24 and you can see we still
have a lot of intersecting so what we
can do is go into let's just turn off
the sweep there let's try to prevent the
sphere
is from kind of overlapping and creating
this overlapping spaghetti string there
so what we can do in our options is
number one what I want to do is kind of
dampen the spring movement so I don't
want it so springy so I'm just going to
bring up the dampening fairly high to
say 500 and you can see that now it
looks a little bit less viscous and what
I can do to even help that a little bit
more so it's not spreading out so much
is by upping the friction values on both
the clones so they more stick to each
other
so it's a little bit more sticky than
fluid and viscous II and sliding all out
of place and I can also up the friction
on my floor object here so I'll just up
that to say 90 and maybe just get rid of
bounce all together so there will be no
bouncing and you can see that with the
friction increased on both the spheres
and the floor you can see this is a
little bit more piling up and if we turn
on our sweep object and turn off hide
our cloner you can see this is looking a
lot more like what we want we still have
a lot of intersecting going on so we
need to work a little bit more to help
prevent that and the one thing we can do
to prevent that is to use and utilize
this size increment on our shape field
here so typically it tries to create a
nice little barrier or shape collision
shape and we can actually grow that to
create kind of like a buffer to grow the
shape of those clatter object so we can
up this size increment if I crank this
up very high you can see that our clones
are going to stay 24 centimeters going
to give a 24 centimeter buffer to each
other and you can see that's way too
much so maybe just the value of 5 so
these these all these spheres that are
being emitted will have a a buffer of 5
centimeters a little force field kind of
thing around it to prevent clones from
getting too close to each other and
therefore preventing our
object geometry from overlapping each
other as well so what we can do to make
this a little bit more accurate and try
to help prevent more intersecting is by
going and I'm going to hit command D and
that's going to go into our project
settings I'm just going to navigate to
my dynamics options here and I'm going
to go to the expert tab what I'm going
to do is up these steps for frame
basically this is going to make a more
accurate simulation but it's also going
to increase the the calculation time so
I'm just going to change this from 15 to
30 and what that's going to do is help
prevent intersecting and just be a more
accurate simulation so I think that's
looking a lot better we're having less
and less intersections let me just
create a make this composition longer
say 300 frames and really let this the
spaghetti fall from the sky here and you
can you're going to see that our
spaghetti just stopped and that's
because our emitter by default has a
stop emission at 150 so I can just make
this emit throughout our whole time 1
hour project length of 300 and this will
just keep emitting here alright so one
more thing I want to do to help tamper
down or just move this up a little bit
more so it falls a little bit more so we
get this piled high get that spaghetti
pout high I want to dampen the the
movement here even more and I can use
this linear dampening to do this as well
so it'll be a little bit more you'll
feel a little bit more heavy and it's
all about the type of dynamics you want
if you want this more viscous you would
definitely want to lower the friction
the friction values and all that stuff
but if you want it more just a little
bit more like toothpaste where it's very
sticky feels very sticky you would wanna
up the friction on the
owner and also deuce a little bit of
linear dampening but not too too much so
say 45 and you can see that really Tampa
is down you can really feel the sticky
weight of our spaghetti here so that's
looking really good one other thing I
want to cover is in the tracer we have a
few different ways to a few different
types of spline interpolation so I chose
cubic and I just want to kind of go
through what all of these look like
because they totally change the way
these are the splines represented so I
choose cubic just because it's a little
bit smoother some people may think that
bezzie a looks a little bit better you
can do a kheema or you can do a b-spline
which really smooths everything out but
you can really tell the difference I
mean the b-spline and the bezzie a is
completely different and cubic just kind
of smooth things out a bit but let's
just stick with bezier for the heck of
it so we got this going on what i want
to do is you can see what this this
emits we just have a look just the
chopped-off little noodle i guess you
would say but let's just round this out
and we can do this by creating a Phillip
cap and you can see that's given a nice
little bevel
let's constrain and just round out the
edges here by upping the steps and just
increase the radius a little bit so like
23 and I'll just do the same on the via
top cap there you can see and just give
it enough rounding that we have nice
rounded edges you can do a create single
object and you'll see that that'll get
rid of that UV little hitch right there
and so now we have a nice rounded noodle
looking good so what we can do is uh
let's just this is kind of going slow
what we can do is jump back into our
dynamics project settings by hitting
command D and we can actually go to the
general tab and up the timescale and
what that's going to do is speed up our
simulation so this is going to move a
lot faster
can even do like 300 but you can see
that because these spheres are being
emitted there's a large gap between them
as they're being emitted so if you up
the time scale you're gonna want to go
to the emitter and emit more of these
spheres as time goes on so maybe change
this to 15 let's see what that looks
like so now we have a lot of spheres
being emitted to connect and make that
nice smooth spline we really have some
spaghetti piling up really fast here now
you can keep like going further with
this and maybe create a Collider body
maybe you want to fill up like some
brain geometry so you'd go and you
create a sphere just go back to frame 0
create a sphere let's do a hemisphere
and just turn this upside down so we're
gonna fill a bowl spaghetti and we're
just going to go ahead and so this can
collide into this we're gonna go and
create a glider body on this as well
let's go and just so it recognizes this
as a hollow shape we need to change the
shape from automatic which is the
fastest but least accurate and it does
not take into account holes or concave
shapes so we need to just change that to
a more accurate shape and that is static
mesh that'll actually take into account
this little hole this little concave
shape and let's see what this looks like
so we're going to fill up this bowl
let's hide the visibility here there we
go so now we're like filling up this
bowl let's actually turn on let's go to
our sphere turn on x-ray so we can see
inside and we can adjust this sphere to
be a little bit smaller so fill up a
little bit faster so there we go we got
a bowl of spaghetti getting filled up
and hopefully this helps you make some
really fun compositions with this some
fun animations using
the spaghetti from the sky and have a
lot of fun with this alright so that's
how you can create some silly string or
spaghetti from the sky using some soft
body dynamics using the clones option so
if you have any questions on anything I
covered in this tutorial be sure to
leave them in the comment sections and
if you make anything any kind of silly
string or whatever you want to call it
be sure to share it with me on Twitter
on my website I use a comm I'd love to
see what you guys are making out there
and if you like this tutorial please hit
the like button I'd really appreciate
that and I really appreciate all of you
out there watching this tutorial I'll
see you all in the next one
alright everybody bye