how to rig/animate a blooming flower

[Lukasz Przybytek]

Hi all!
Here is my problem. I've been asked to animate a blooming flower and
currently I'm doing a lot of research. Few years ago had to do the
same animation but was never happy with the result. Had problems with
keeping faces from intersecting and making it all look really
realistic. Well at the time I didnt know that much about rigging
either. Anyways I need to create some kind of a hybrid of different
types of flowers. Something that doesnt really exist. Here are some
examples of flowers that my client likes:

http://www.chandrabrooksphotography.com/Water%20Lilly%20with%20Frame.jpg

http://www.rullerdsen.de/Bilder/Magnolie.jpg

http://green-24.de/forum/files/thumbs/t_magnolie_210.jpg

http://www.komsta.net/walls/fors2-1280.jpg

http://www.komsta.net/walls/magnolia-1280.jpg

http://www.komsta.net/walls/hyacinth1-1280.jpg

Flowers I'm supposed to create will be placed just in front of the
camera so details are very important.

Would really appreciate if you could share your experiences, notes,
advices etc. Usefull links are of course very welcomed too.

This thread was also started at XSIBase.
http://www.xsibase.com/forum/index.php?board=11;action=display;threadid=34780

Thanks!
S.
---
Unsubscribe? Mail Majo...@Softimage.COM with the following text in body:
unsubscribe xsi

[Gerbrand Nel]

The main flower in this spot "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmL2eBJ_HZE " was done in XSI using
mostly scaling and rotating skeleton rigs. the branches and pods were
shape animated revolves, deformed on curves. The best solution we found
on this job was to keep the operator stack live so you can always use
more than one device to accomplish the effect your after
good luck
G

> __________ NOD32 2630 (20071031) Information __________
>
> This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system.
> http://www.eset.com

[Byron Nash]

I did some flowers last year like that. I agree with Gerbrand, try to keep live operator stacks. I used a lot of curve deforms and taper ops for the petals. I'll try to dig up a link for an example.

--
Byron Nash
www.armoredsquirrel.com

[Anthony barritault]

Same Thing Here :

http://nhaptop.over-blog.com/

on the add in the " reprise du blog" post, I,ve animated all the (petals?) by rotation and scaling, the very beginning is done by shape animation.

What you can do is to animate the flower part carefully ( I know, long and painfull, and trust me, when you need to do that for a flower, it's so horrible to do) and put that into a clips to tweak global animation lengh and speed.


anton, hey ! flower power !!!!

[Lukasz Przybytek]

Thank you all for your tips! They are gonna be definitely usefull! Will let you know about the result :)

Btw. How would you approach another thing in this animation. Wind... the flowers are supposed to move a bit on the wind. Previously I worked in Maya (just recently made a switch) and I miss one thing -> dynamics on curves. How can I over come this in XSI? I'm sure there is a way to do it. 

Kind regards!

Luke.

[John Payne]

I have rigged and animated quite a few flowers and vines for Psyop and here
at Pure.

If you start with a bulb and have to have the flower open up, I recommend
using bones to drive a lattice that is enveloped to a bone chain. You then
deform your petals with the lattices that are rigged to the bones.
Put your center point at the base of the petal and then you can scale
the petals through the lattice while the bones handle the opening of
the flower.

*For more control with this technique you can use the shape manager or put
shape keys on top of the lattice operator of the petal object.

Rigging Steps:
1. move center of petal object to base of petal.
2. freeze the petal object.
2. create a lattice for the petal object, (give it about 1/2 to 1/3 the
subdivisions of your petal objects subdivisions).
3. create your bone chain for the petal, (for more control you can use bone
chains that branch off the main bone chain).
4. cut your lattice from under the petal object.
5. envelope your lattice to the bone chain.
6. put everything as a child under a null to transform it, (SRT null), etc.
7. animate the bones rotating to open the flower, and scale the petal object
in one axis to grow the flower.

This way you can scale the petal through the lattice to create the illusion
that the petal is growing, which you would not be able to do if the petal
object itself was enveloped to the bones.

Hope this helps,

- John Payne

[kim aldis]

The reason these guys are mostly suggesting bones is that they animate
perfectly for this kind of thing if you just select each one in the chain
individually and rotate. It's also easy to set up a single control by
expressing rotations back to that single control, either raw or multiplying
lessening rotations as bones are closer to tips.

[Lukasz Przybytek]

John, Kim, all of you,
Thank you very very much for your tips! They are all very usefull!

Animatics need to be done next week. So in 2 weeks I should be able to
post the result!

Kind regards,
Luke.