Cinema 4D Tutorial - Using Soft Body Dynamics to Create an Elastic Ribbon Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

hey everybody its EJ from iodine calm
and today we're going to have some fun
making some ribbons using soft body
dynamics let's learn how all right so
this is an example of what we're going
to be creating today using some cool
ribbon dynamics using soft body dynamics
inside of cinema 4d this is set up
without any keyframes whatsoever so it's
a really really cool workflow to maybe
help you guys out with some of your
mograph projects in the future so let's
jump in and find out how I did this so
first thing we're going to do is just
create a little scene here you can call
it a scene and I'm just going to make
some cylinders here and make them kind
of small and I'm just going to these are
just going to be kind of like rollers
that will have the ribbon fall on top of
and be pulled across kind of like like a
conveyor belt kind of thing so there's
our cylinders we can apply some happy
wood textures on these something like
that so there we go we got some happy
wood textures and then I'll just create
a simple plane object one for the four
because we want this to actually collide
into a floor and then one plane that's
going to be the rivet now for the ribbon
what I'm going to do is I want this to
be fairly linear in that I don't want
the ribbon to kind of go to the left of
the right I kind of just want this to
shoot across one plane which is the Z
plane to just go straight across and not
kind of fold and flop on over so let me
just demonstrate what I'm getting after
here so let's set this scene up for
dynamics right now no dynamics is
applied all of these objects right here
are cylinders in our four
we just renamed this for we know what
the heck that is all these are just
going to be colliders meaning that this
ribbon is going to be collided into
everything else in the scene but those
objects these cylinders are not going to
have forces act upon it so gravity won't
be applied to it or anything like that
they're just going to be bumps on a log
going to get collided into by this
ribbon so I'm going to right click go to
simulation tags Collider body now this
is very aptly named as once you apply
this to objects they are just going to
be collided into and for the ribbon
we're actually going to use soft body
dynamics now soft body dynamics is very
aptly named as well where it allows the
object that you apply the soft body
dynamics to apply a texture real quick
it's just going to calm it it's just
going to kind of flop down and what
controls all the soft bodies options are
in here and all these Springs you're
going to see that because these
cylinders and all this good stuff have
glider bodies on them before these
cylinders you're going to see that hey
our ribbon collided into those objects
so this is this soft body tab of our
dynamics body tag right here on this
ribbon is where all the happy good stuff
although all the nitty-gritty really we
gooey soft body stuff happens so I have
another tutorial that goes in-depth on
what all these Springs are and all this
good stuff so definitely check that out
if you want to learn more about the soft
bodies that that that phrase just sound
a little bit dirty but let's go ahead
and just cover really quick what we're
going to be dealing with so these are
Springs and we have structural shear
inflection Springs structural are the
springs that kind of connect the edges
and then we have dampening which
basically dampens the
should be dampening though but it
basically dampens the oscillation of
those soft body Springs on each of these
types of Springs here so sheer it
prevents the the connections between
like the angles like loop the vertical
or the diagonal angles here from kind of
folding over one another so those are
the two type of strings Springs we're
going to be dealing with today and
you're going to notice that the more
Springs we have the stiffer our object
is so if I just put five on these and we
just have this play you're going to see
this a little bit especially with the
flexi on down it's going to be more like
a wet paper bag kind of thing it's going
to give away and the other thing that
controls a lot of this too as well are
the segments here so if I up the
segments especially on the height and
then let this go you're going to see a
lot more detail a lot more crazy stuff
happening you're going to see our our
stuff just fall to the floor
and things are dancing around and this
is perfect set it off the client take a
vacation now this is this looks like hot
garbage so what we're going to do to fix
this and we want this more ribbon like
and you can see what I'm talking about
as far as the movement back and forth
where we just want to you it's kind of
like sliding off the side we don't want
that kind of movement and that movement
is basically being done by that flexion
the flex Ian is point based and allows
our object to go from side to side I'm
actually going to just get rid of all
the width segments altogether so we just
have height segments so we're just going
to get a nice straight ribbon so we can
make this go again you're going to see
that it's also going to fall through the
floor let's uh we need to stiffen this
up a little bit and give it more Springs
to define the shape
of this ribbon here so what I'm going to
do is kind of crank up the structural
and the shear to a to a bigger number
like two hundred and two hundred and
you're going to see that we have a
little bit more detail we still have a
lot of funky stuff going on and this is
due to the fact that if I hit command-d
and go to my project settings here
there's this dynamics tag by default in
the expert tab of the dynamics tag we
have these steps for frame and the
maximum solver iterations per step now
basically this increases the
calculations and helps create a more
accurate dynamics calculation so when
you're seeing stuff like hey this
objects just falling through my floor
and all this stuff it's a good bet that
you need to up these two options here so
this just means that there's more
calculations per frame more accurate
dynamic simulations so let's just go
ahead and let's just crank this up to
like thirty and thirty and see what
happens
and you're now going to see that hey we
no longer have our ribbon falling
through the floor and we actually get a
little bit more of an accurate
simulation we can definitely see the
form of the cylinders a lot better as
well and it's behaving like we would
expect this thing to right so one thing
I want to go over you can see a lot of
stuff move around a lot of flailing that
could be helped by opening the damping
on both the structural and the shear
Springs you can see that just with the
structural and this year we're not
actually moving side-to-side which is
really great let me just let me just
bring up the flexion and you're going to
see what's going to happen you're going
to see a lot of folding from side to
side and this is the kind of thing
especially right here that we don't want
so when we remove the flexion it's going
to stay a little bit straighter and a
little bit stiffer not going to fall
from side to side because that flexion
is what actually
enables that kind of movement so we just
want straight across and actually one of
my cylinders a little bit too far to the
right there okay so we have some
stretching going on here as you can tell
is that here's our original subdivision
of our plane object to our ribbon but
it's getting stretched out right so
let's go ahead and we need to do a
little bit more tweaking here the first
thing I want to do again is go back to
the damping and try to get rid of all
this oscillation and we can crank this
up to a huge number like 2000 2000 and
let this simulation go again and you're
going to see that it kind of more
gradually Falls and it dampens all that
springy movement and kind of tightens
things up a bit
let's go ahead and up the structural
here to like 200 you're going to see
that those those little stretching you
know how everything kind of sags adding
more Springs to the structural will
tighten that up and make everything look
more like a ribbon now you can crank
this up to a crap-ton percentage which
is the official scientific definition of
a number that high you can see that the
oscillations are a bit less cool so now
we can actually like start to animate
this and animate it by having these
rollers these cylinders just move so
let's apply some animation without any
keyframes using a time effector so to
have objects be affected by effectors in
this effector menu we actually need to
place them in a fracture object that
will then allow all that effector
information and movement to pass on to
its children objects so I'll just place
these cylinders underneath the fracture
and I'll just make this cylinder
fracture object and then I'll go ahead
and grab a time effector now time
effector is super super useful I cover
the time effector in a in another
tutorial that if you want to check that
out definitely
tip that up
but the time effector basically applies
animation that is just kind of constant
so you can see the end of this Lu little
twirling around and that's all
controlled by the value that you put in
either rotation or position or whatever
but you can see that this is just
applying a constant rotation in that
heading rotation so it's kind of like
you're used to After Effects and that
time multiplied by expression same kind
of thing like this just automates
animation constant animation without
requiring any keyframes whatsoever so
these are actually spinning in the wrong
direction so let's uh well let's have
these spin in the pitch and you can see
that now we have these kind of rollers
rolling in a direction actually going
backwards so we'll go like negative to
50 you can see they're all rolling
forward now you can see that nothing's
really happening there's no traction for
these rollers to affect the ribbon here
and we can add some traction by going
into our collision tab and upping the
friction let's actually go into all of
these and just get rid of the bounce
we don't want much bounce at all we want
this to act like almost like a like a
like receipt ribbon of paper or
something like that
so what we're going to do is crank up
the friction amount to like 90 you're
going to see that just adding that
friction is kind of creating this nice
conveyor belt effect and let's actually
crank this up even more and now you can
really see that being passed along it's
almost like you know a tank tread or
something like that these little wheels
are spinning and moving along our ribbon
which is awesome so one thing you're
going to notice is that this looks like
crap if you render it it's all chunky
right so the one thing we can do to help
that out is go into our cloth or
simulate menu go to cloth and go to
cloth surface and place that ribbon
underneath that cloth and going to see
it's going to try to smooth that out
a little bit especially if we like up
these subdivisions here you can see
that's going to smooth everything out
really nicely we can even add a little
bit of thickness if we want thick and
picking that little ribbon there you go
we can up the subdivision you really see
that's a really dense mesh now and when
we render looks fairly nice and smooth
so we can start you know playing around
with a lot of stuff here let's just
bring the subdivisions down just for
tutorial purposes and you know get this
looking nice so we can I really
encourage you to play around with a lot
of stuff in here
even aerodynamics can maybe help out
something like this if it's double sided
it kind of helps with how a like a flat
piece of paper reacts to dynamics in the
scene so you can see that adds a little
bit more of a difference as its having
like drag and lift forces effect this
the single sided or two-sided um a
little plain ribbon here so you can get
some cool little effects like this we
can even you know let's maybe go up here
looks shorten this and maybe angle it up
like that and have this fall you can see
that it kind of gracefully falls
gracefully gracefully Falls and you can
see that what happens when I take off
the aerodynamics it just kind of falls
flat
but this aerodynamics actually does
quite a bit and it makes it more like a
sheet almost so keep that in mind close
the aerodynamics let's create some cool
cloth ribbon effects like that and then
also going into the springs here and
maybe experimenting with maybe a
crap-ton more sheer and structural
spring something like that so you can
see that the more Springs you add the
more the more Springs the more
information the more oscillation we get
the more detail we get on
soft bodies versus like 50 springs
something like that so this is kind of
cool just to get like a folding ribbon
and again if the ribbon is not quite
going fast enough we can also you really
crank up the friction here a lot and you
can see that's going to be pulling along
you can see this ribbon slowly move in
here so let's take this a little bit
further so that's just like acting upon
a plane here let's go ahead and do
something more like this so you can see
this is like the same kind of setup I
have a ribbon made out of a spline with
a sweep object that is just a spline
with a rectangle no width so this is
effectively like a flat plane going
through here I'm not going to bore you
with how this was set up but you can see
here's my spline we all know how to make
splines right and basically what I did
was just kind of set up my cylinders the
way I want them to I have my time
effector here you can actually see that
I have some cylinders going one
direction and some go in the other and I
also have a random effector kind of
moving these around ever so slightly so
what's going to happen is we're going to
have this cool effect of the cylinders
kind of pushing and pulling and
stretching this what it will eventually
be this ribbon so you can see that I put
a number two where the spline is let me
just put spline back in there and you
can see that basically what I did was
just try to keep this spline as close as
possible to this the cylinders without
getting too too close because if you get
too close things are going to go nutty
with the dynamics there's going to be
some really weird collisions and stuff
like that another thing I want to point
out and this is very very important very
important the how this is set up how the
spline set up so it's set up with bezzie
a and then we need enough point or
enough information here
let me just go to my shading lines and
by default you're the spline is set to
adaptive intermediate points and what's
going to happen if you just leave it
like that you can see all this uneven
subdivisions are subdividing of our
sweep object here and that is going to
cause some very funky soft body dynamic
regions we want to try to make this as
evenly subdivided as possible so what
I've kind of played around with and what
I've discovered is the best intermediate
point method is subdivided and then
bringing the angle and the maximum
length both to about five so you can see
we have this nicely subdivided a little
ribbon set up here and that should
lessen any kind of issues so we have our
wheels turning a wheel return and all we
need to do now is again apply all those
soft body or all those dynamic tags to
all of our objects and our scenes so
let's just select all of our cylinders
here right click go to simulation
collider body and again get rid of the
bounce maybe adjust the size increment
here just to give it a little bit of
padding what the size increment does is
gives a little bit of space for the
dynamics to kind of act as a buffer so
you don't have any geometry intersection
or anything like that so usually like a
value of like point five or even like
one like some small value gives just a
big enough buffer so you won't have this
ribbon intersecting with the cylinders
here so let's go ahead and just like we
did with the other example crank up the
friction to a fairly high amount and
let's see everything else is good here
and then we'll just go ahead and on the
ribbon on the sweep object ribbon we'll
just go ahead and apply a Collider body
or not a Collider body testing yeah that
was wrong okay we're going to go and get
a soft body there we go and again we'll
use the
more accurate shape
so moving mesh and we can do a sizing
come in here as well but I don't think
we'll really need that we'll just bring
the bounce to zero no bouncing allowed
and then friction to fifty as well so
here again is where is where we make the
bacon right here is all in the soft body
settings here now remember in our last
example we had a no flexion
get out of here flexion and we have very
high values a scientific crap-ton of
springs and some dampening so let's just
go back and just check to see what those
values were so we can start with those
so we had it was higher than that but
two hundred two hundred and let's give
that a go so we'll just do two hundred
and the structual two hundred and the
shear and then for the dampening
crap-ton crap-ton little too much crap
fun okay so now let's see what happens
here you're going to see that okay we
got some stuff happening we have a lot
of so right here let's stop it right
there you can see that all of our
subdivisions that were evenly spaced out
kind of falls apart and the reason for
this is is we need more structural
springs to stiffen all of that up
because we have quite a few subdivisions
we need to up our structural amount so
let's craft on a note 6,000 boom you get
six thousand everyone you get six
thousand so let's go ahead and do this
again you're going to see that by upping
those spring values we now have a more
consistent well a little bit more
consistent type of thing going on and
one thing I'm seeing is this bunching up
of our ribbon so let's go ahead and
maybe maybe that friction amount was a
little bit too much so let's go ahead
let's go 150 and actually just like we
did pre
obviously let's go into our dynamics
project settings so again that's command
D and or just go into this mode project
settings and go into the dynamics tag go
into the expert and again let's up these
steps per frame and maximum solver
iterations for frame and we're going to
crank both of those both of those up to
30 and 30 now let's see what happens you
know see this is going to slow it down a
little bit but you're not seeing those
polygons stretching or anything like
that we're getting a more accurate type
of thing going on here so still kind of
very loose and we would expect this to
be very tight around these cylinders now
there's one really really cool function
inside of soft body dynamics and that is
this rest length right here so what this
means is that the rest length of all of
our Springs is a hundred percent of what
they start out with if we make this
bigger we're going to have wait for it a
lot of stretching because what's
actually happening is it's making the
rest length of each of those Springs
twice it's normal size so you can see
all this explosion and expansion because
we're basically doubling the size of
those Springs now conversely if we bring
the rest length to like 25 it's actually
going to shrink those Springs and you're
going to see it's going to would like
suck in we just gave liposuction to our
soft body dynamics here and you can see
that this is actually really awesome
this tread kind of kind of suctioned
itself to this shape because we shrunk
the the initial size of those Springs by
using this rest length one other thing I
want to cover that's very important is
this elastic limit it's kind of like the
rest length where this elastic limit
basically tells what's the limit of
these structural Springs like how much
times the original size can those
Springs stretch and by default it's set
to a thousand percent
what I actually want to do is make that
zero I don't want any kind of stretching
kind of like this happening here and
this actually would have helped out in
our original example as well if we bring
this elastic limit to zero you'll get
way less stretching and it'll be a lot
stiffer you can see that right there all
right so let's go back to our ribbon
version two and one thing you're going
to notice let's bring that elastic limit
down to zero one thing you notice is
that once it stretches down we have a
there's any ribbon and we don't want a
very skinny ribbon we want a fairly
large ribbon so what we want to do with
that is one thing I think I'm going to
do is let's just test with not so much
of a crap-ton of damping there so maybe
something like that okay so let's go
ahead and again experimenting will help
a lot with this and I keep seeing right
here this big gap and sometimes that's
due to the original spline in maybe some
of the Bezier handles so if you see
something like that crop up maybe adjust
some of these handles the angles
something like that I've after
experimenting quite a bit with this
technique I've kind of troubleshooted
this effect a little bit and sometimes
you just need to give a little bit of
love to the handles to try to iron out
some of those weird issues and now you
can kind of see okay we don't have that
big gap here anymore but we have this
big gap right down there with those
wider polygons so maybe we have to
adjust something in here as well so just
so you know that if you see those issues
pop up where you have those very wide
gaps between polygons or the
subdivisions just mess around with the
Bezier handles you can see looks like we
fix that pretty well cool so that's just
a little bit of troubleshooting so let's
go back to the task at hand one last
thing we got to do is we need to stretch
out this ribbon a little bit more so as
we shrunk it using the rest length here
so what we're going to do is
we'll just overcompensate for the
shrinking that the shrinking value which
is just we shrink it by a quarter right
so 25 percent of the hundred percent so
what we'll do is we'll add on a quarter
of the size in the Z so let's actually
just you know double it and see what
happens there so this is going to shrink
down you can see that we made it a
little bit wider so maybe let's try like
2.75 let this go and that looks a lot
better that looks like almost to where
our original width was of our ribbon you
can see as these exist I'm expecting the
best part about this milky frames you
can see that this is moving along like a
tank tread or something like that and
it's all due to this friction on these
cylinders the soft body dynamics with
the with the rest length set down to 25
to suction and shrink that ribbon into
place so it's almost like you know like
a this would be really really nice for
like a it makes me think immediately of
like a timing belt on a car or something
like that some kind of conveyor belt
system and you don't need to do any kind
of complex you know all this stuff up
here where's all this to like the the
connectors and the springs and force and
motors and does it uh no sir and no
ma'am we are just using soft body
dynamics time effector some mograph and
a little bit of love so one last thing
you might be asking is hey EJ what the
heck I can't just render out an
animation from this point to that point
how do I get this to just have this
dynamic simulation just suction itself
from the get-go to this point well I'll
tell you the only thing we have to do to
have that actually maintain this shape
and then proceed to do the soft by a
dynamic simulation from this state is by
simply going over to the main dynamics
a tab and just saying set initial state
in what this will do is allow this
current state to be the starting state
you can see that everything's a little
off because I still have that time
effect you're going and stuff like that
but you're going to see but that
actually snaps back fairly quickly and
now we have we don't have that big
suctioning that we had previously and we
have a little bit of overlap right at
the top but again you can always edit
that out once you go ahead and render
alright so now it's your turn to create
some fun soft body dynamic web ins
inside of cinema 4d if you make anything
based off this tutorial I would love to
see what you come up with leave them in
the comment section or tweet them at me
Instagram and that mean Facebook me
right in my face with everything that
you guys are making after you watch this
tutorial if you have any questions leave
them in the comments section I'll get to
them as quickly as I can and if you have
any other questions about anything this
tutorial maybe you want to see how I
made that wood texture definitely leave
those comments in the the OL comment
section down below and if you liked this
tutorial I'd really appreciate if you
liked it and subscribe if you want to
see more from me I would really really
appreciate that so I'll see all of you
guys in the next video thanks for
watching everybody