Is there any way to begin the calculation of dynamic hair simulation at a particular frame of an animation, or does it always have to start at the first frame? For instance, with dynamic cloth, you can specify a frame to start at and end at, etc. I don't see any options like this for the dyna hair though. :-( I have a 600+ frame animation set up that already has multiple dynamic cloth calculations completed. However, I only want to calculate the hair starting at frame 40, since the beginning series of frames in the animation are specifically for the cloth draping and settling simulation of the opening portion of the animation, and the hair gets "blown" into a position I'm not fond of during that series of events. What can I do here that doesn't include re-calculating all the cloth sims over again? I'm stumped.

Is it possible to add some additional frames between frame 40 and 41 to allow the hair to settle? That's about the only thing I can think of. Edit - wait, I just realized that would probably require new calculations. Ugh.

Message edited on: 10/17/2004 15:12

Thanks, Mystic. Yeah, this is a tough one to figure out. I don't think there's any solution for it that wouldn't require recalc'ing the cloth too. If I were able to "cut" the first 40 frames from the existing animation, then it would be oK, but Poser doesn't have the ability to do that... you can only cut the ending frames, or you can optionally save any number of frames as an animated pose, but it doesn't retain the cloth simulation that way. I think I'll just have to resort to either using modeled hair and hand animating it (yuck), or possibly use a hair type that doesn't need animating (like the "cool coils" hair or something). :-(

The only other thing I can think of, which may or may not work, is to export the state of the clothing at frame 40 (your "relaxed" state) as OBJ files and use those at frame 0.

Message edited on: 10/17/2004 15:32

You could also use Phil C's tip: render a range of animation, starting at frame 40.

That's not really gonna help me here, mateo. I'm looking to calculate hair dynamics starting only at a particular frame in the animation. The dyna hair starts at frame 1 no matter what you do it seems. It's a bit of a different dilemma, since I was trying to avoid re-calculating all the cloth I already did. It's a 654 frame animation, and the cloth took a while to calculate. ;-)

Maxxx; If you have the cloth dynamics done and saved, all you have to do is turn your windforce off, then give it a keyframe at 40 to turn in back on. The hair will drape, but won't blow until then. Just make sure that you don't recalculate any of the cloth drapes, or the change in windforce will be recorded (It took me awhile to hammer that into my head; once a dynamic calculation is done and saved, it's unchanged until you recalculate things)

Hi Dale. Yeah, problem here is... there's no actual "wind" modifier in the scene. The hair is getting moved around in the preliminary frames just from the movement from 0 pose(frame 1) to the first pose of the actual action (frame 40). Now, I realise I could just drape the cloth starting at the first pose of the "actual" animation, and not use the zero-pose at frame 1 at all, but I have to use a zero-pose in this case, because the figure gets modified with FBM's at the first frame of the actual animation, and I have it set up so that the morphs "ease" into the cloth from the zero pose (frame 1) to the first frame of the actual action (frame 40 or so).

Hope I'm explaining it so as not to confuse ya.

Message edited on: 10/17/2004 21:48

Eeeeg. That do complicate things. I tried setting a keyframe at 40 and turning dynamics off on the dial panel on a hair piece in a scene I'm working on, but it had no effect on toggling the hair reaction; still draped and deformed at the first frame. I did learn one thing new, though. Adding geometry to a scene can sometimes kill the cloth dynamics and reset the cloth prop to null. Make sure you save before adding (It was one of Transpond pre-Columbian preset props). About the only thing I can think of is to try -using- the windforce to counteract the motion of the body adjustment. It may take several generators with narrow focuses and small force settings to do it, but that's about all I can think of at the moment.....

Thanks, Dale. Really appreciate the help.

Sadly, I ended up starting over again from scratch. Luckily, I do have the animation portion saved as a pose file, so now I'll just pose the character in the same way it will appear when the action portion of the animation begins, then I'll forward about 30 or so frames to allow the FBM's to "grow" under the clothes, then it should kick into the animation nicely from there.

I was really hoping to avoid recalc'ing the clothes, because they turned out nicely, but there's no way to tell the dynamic hair to start simulation at a certain frame, so that's a bummer.

Eh, that's about a whole day wasted today. LOL. Oh well, tomorrow's yet another day to animate I guess. ;-) Thanks again.

Message edited on: 10/18/2004 01:11

Im curious as to why you are rendering single scene 600+ frame animation anyway?? thats a ten minute shot!! if this is for a short 3D animated film you should really start thinking in termsof rendering short "takes" and editing them together in a post production program to create the appearance of continuity. that Dynamic hair shot should be renderd seperately and edited in. Turn on your TV/DVD etc. and carefully watch how often the camera changes shots even in some lengthy courtroom Drama or such. Each of thoses shots were filmed seperately probably on different days. but cleverly edited together to create the appearance of one ten minute sequence Just something to consider. Good Luck! :-)

Actually, that's a 20 second shot at 30fps. That is a short take. ;) I usually optimize to 24 fps, which is television ready, so I could squeeze 25 seconds out of 600 frames... But most people won't optimize or t.v. ;)

"that Dynamic hair shot should be renderd seperately and
edited in."

How would you do that? This shot is a full-body shot, just over 20 seconds long (short). It contains 2 dynamic cloth sims, and one dynamic hair sim. Sure, I could render the scene in segments and piece it together later, but I still have to run the dynamic sims over the entire duration of the clip in order to get a convincing and accurate flow going. If I don't do it this way, I'd have to set up and run sims multiple times for each segment. That's a little bit of overkill, and might not work out correctly.

"Turn on your TV/DVD etc. and carefully watch how often the camera changes shots even in some lengthy courtroom Drama or such."

Yeah, I realize this. I bring the animation into another app for final render, so I can batch render multiple camera angles of the same animation much faster than can be done in Poser directly, then edit each of them together in post, forming the "cuts" and sequences of the final shot in a video editor, just like you're suggesting. So in essence, it's almost exactly like is done on a real movie set.

I don't consider 600 frames a very long clip. Poser seems to think it is, however. ;-) Message edited on: 10/18/2004 15:03