Hi, I am in a bit of a fix here trying to work out the best way to animate an evacuation slide deploying from a plane. at beginning of animation it must be small and compressed then inflates initially from the top/plane door downwards
was thinking a path deform to get the shape and then a number of morph targets?
haven’t tried this before and would appreciate any ideas,
Thanks
I haven’t tried this approach, but something that could look quite nice would be to model the slide then run a cloth sim having it collapse flat onto the floor. Then run a cloth sim having it inflate (using pressure). You could then bake this animation (or pull a couple of morph targets from it) then use an animated path deform to animate it unfurling.
I’m not 100% sure if that’s explained very clearly, if I get a chance I’ll see if I can mock up a simple test later today.
Think you can also have a volume select animating a vertex selection fed into your morpher for the gradual inflate too.
hmmm, was thinking of avoiding cloth/physics and go old school on it, A) have F’ all cloth and physics experience 
and B) it has to open from a bag, I can get away with a bit of inaccuracy as the inflation will be very quick.
@AJ if you do get a chance to knock up something then I’d be very interested in seeing the method,
Ok this is reaaally cheap and nasty and not exactly what I originally thought of. Basically, I’ve run a cloth sim to flatten the slide out then morphed back to the inflated state using a volume select exactly like John suggested. I’ve got it path deforming along a spline with a bend modifier, but it’s pretty nasty. You’d probably be better off getting it to unfurl using a simple bone rig…
slide.zip (235 KB)
thanks AJ, any chance i could get in 2015 format -
Here are some examples of inflation with the cloth modifier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HWDhUawHvw
Here you go!
slide2015.zip (235 KB)
Cheers AJ, that works very well for a quick mock up