Opening a book - done a thousand times

[Adam H. Stewart]

It has been done a thousand times, so I suppose this makes it 1001. What is the best method for animating the pages of a book. The hard part is getting it to look realistic with the bend and sway of the pages givng the paper a real sense of weight. I have done it before with bend modifiers (witout too much luck) and was thinking of using blend shapes this time or possibly bones this tme, using the reaction manager to give me so extra control.

Any thoughts on the matter - anybody come across killer book tutorials ?

Thanks as always.

[jacksc02]

why not simcloth??
would be quick and easy to set up

[Adam H. Stewart]

Never thought of that

Emm - interesting, never thought of it or used Sim Cloth. I'm on 7.5 so I have it, I should look into it, is it easy to use ? Come across any good tutorials ?

[Da_elf]

actually ive done it using a spline to give the look of the page. then had the spline extruded then use shell on it to give a sliiiight thickness as my last step. basically animating the spline gives the profile of the book. you can add other things like flex etc to the page if you want. i prefer to animate by hand with other modifyers like bend etc to warp the perfect profile of the page on corners etc.

http://www.elfpro3d.com/book.avi was a little test i did once.

[Adam H. Stewart]

Nice

Nice - never thought of animating the spline. I have given it shot with Morph targets - it is working quite well so far. The spline would have been easier - thanks for the tip. By the way this animation is great - did they ever use it ?