Introduction to Maya - Rendering in Arnold
This course will look at the fundamentals of rendering in Arnold. We'll go through the different light types available, cameras, shaders, Arnold's render settings and finally how to split an image into render passes (AOV's), before we then reassemble it i
# 1 15-11-2011 , 04:41 AM
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Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: Durham, NC
Posts: 9

Testing a dragon wing

My project has dragon-style wings. I want to focus on the wings alone without having to deal with any distractions (I seem to go off on tangents easily) so I deleted the rest of the model and saved as wing_test.

I am planning to use soft bodies and gravity to make the wing membrane flop around. Is there a way to keep the wing from falling to the floor when I turn on the gravity? Would I have to build an armature to attatch it to? Is there a better way to animate a dragon wing?

# 2 15-11-2011 , 05:28 AM
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Technical Director
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 2,988
This is quite a complex question; as any solution will require a lot of work for a truly automated system. Take a look into nCloth. You can paint the stiffness of the wings, as well as other properties.


Imagination is more important than knowledge.
# 3 17-11-2011 , 05:11 AM
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Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: Durham, NC
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Yeah, I wish I could use nCloth. I only have Maya 6 Unl.

# 4 23-11-2011 , 04:35 AM
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Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: Durham, NC
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Idea

Could I separate the wing "fingers" from the membrane and turn the membrane into a cloth object and attach it to the fingers? Any good toots on how to do this with Cloth?

I have thought about manually adjusting the verts in the membrane in the folded state and adding attributes just to get the project done. (that's a lot of adjusting, though)

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