smooth flag animation

[flipside]

Hi,

What would be a good way to animate a little flag like this:



It should be very smooth and simple! First problem is the animation itsself, but another problem is how to make sure that the four parts move as if they were one.

I tried very simple with an opacity map (a cross) but the the objects becomes hollow. tried displacement too but that didn't work out...

I tried to animate with simcloth, but then the object behaves like a bag, the two sides of the flag move away from each other.

So if you have any ideas, please let me know (note: I'm pretty new to animating!)

Regards,

flipside

[LuKa]

Did you try with Ripple modifier? Just an idea

[natty]

i would make it one mesh and then attached a wave modifier to it and animate that, or you could try noise modifier and animate that ....i think the key is to experiment.....

[mike_kennedy]

The way the mesh is modeled will make a big difference too. Looks of quads would be good.
Cheers
Mike Kennedy

[flipside]

Thanks, I used the wave thing, never thought it would be this easy! Think I'm gonna try out all the other modifiers just to see what each one does. I exported the mesh from rhino, I just made sure that it had enough polygons to remain smooth.

thanks again,

flipside

[J_Bug]

You could probably export as IGES file format from Rhino if you run into problems with faceting. This will import into MAX as NURBS curves.

--Jon

[flipside]

Thanks, I simply used 3ds, it was a very simple model. Here's a divx movie:

http://users.pandora.be/stor1/vray/wave_divx2.avi

I can't get the repeat smooth. I adjusted the phase correctly, with equal gaps on each frame but it keeps on jumping between frame 49 and frame 0.