Waving Flag
 

Im having trouble getting my softbodies flag to wave like it should be.I would like to know what effects goes into making a flag wave randonly side to side and even up and down a bit.Iv'e been using a fan effect with a gravity effect with not so good results.My fan effect just blows the flag forward but i would like the flag to blow back and forth.Also the gravity part just pulls it down.Iv'e been looking for some setting in the attribte editor that will give it a random effect but i dont see that.Any help would be apreciated.

If you are using goals for your softy, you would need to animate the general motion of your NON-soft goal object, and your "soft" flag would follow along, taking on the general movement of that animation, and also benefit with your fan field as well.

Hope that made sense?

So do i make a "Make Copy Soft" when i want to turn it into a softbodie?im going to go sahead then and try it out and see what i get.Thanks for the info Ragecgi

No problem!

Also, make sure to check the docs regarding "Painting Goal Weights" so as to help you paint the areas that you want to be more wavy:)

(i.e lighter grey means less weight, black means 0, or stiff.)

Ok after alot of headaches i think ive made some progress but not sure if this was the correct way of doing it.Here is my scene file that shows my flag in a wave that im almost happy with but still needs some tweeking.I need some help to know how to keep the left edge to stay stiff.If i can get help with that it would be much apreciated.

opps....here is the scene file. :)

What version of Maya are you running?

(Note: this is important, as there is a step-by-step flag tut in the 4.5 docs that I found:)

Either way, if you check out this page in the docs, your problems should be solved:

Go to: Dynamics - Soft Bodies - Paint Soft Body Weights Tool

The example on this page shows you how to pretty much paint weights on a hanging drape, but the same idea applies to a flag:)

Good luck!

PS, that way, you don't need to worry about springs unless you want to:)

Yai got 4.5. I didnt see a flag tutorial but now that you mentioned it ill look at it better.I used springs cause i seen the better results in terms of the flag waving more like i wanted to.

Thanks again for your huge help ragecgi.

No problem:)