Hi. ive tried to figure out how to add FEM on a animated character from Mixamo, so that it can collide with floor and such.

Question: Is is a simple way to add FEM to animated object?

I tried to use organic object to it, but my animated geo just falls to the ground. I tried to have my animated geo before “rest possition” before into DOPs but with no luck.

https://vimeo.com/118406486 [vimeo.com]

Ive read a couple of threads here and on odforce forum, but i cant seem to find an easy solution on it.

Thanks for any help

Moin,

I don't fully get what you are after (“collide with ground and such” - do you have a ground plane?) … but I have used FEM (for “cloth” solving) in Houdini successfully on movie shots importing animated characters from the pipeline (using Alembic Caches).

If your character “falls through the ground” my assumption is that you don't have a ground plane it can collide with. Could you get a bit more specific about the problems you are having?

I will do a walkthrough on one of my shots ASAP, but unfortunately my Pateron does not yet bring in enough money to allow for the time such videos take, so this may be a bit further down the month.

Marc

Thanks for the reply! I wrote this before my morning coffe so i will try and describe better.
I just want to add “solid object” to my animated mesh.
I have my animated object, then add “solid object” from shelf tool, when i run simulation in dops, my mesh makes one tiny move, then falls to the ground, with no more movement.
I guess i have to use rest or Target from Sops into Dop, but i cant seem to figure it out.

I want my animated object to interact with DOPs.
example: a fatman with a big belly, want the body to bounce using FEM.

Moin,

OK, as far as I understand you don't want to add a “solid” object but some kind of “soft body” object to your animated object. In general the “easiest” approach here would be to anchor points on the simulated body to points of the animated body. This is usually known as the “attach flag to pole” job (in the video below I am mainly addressing the “wind” thing, but attaching the flag to the pole is covered, too).



Another approach would be to combine point positions from animation and simulation to recreate what bullet calls “follow pose” (I think Houdini has a feature for that in FEM, too, I can look it up if you cannot find it). The advantage of this is that you could even simulate PARTS of an otherwise fully animated body simply by applying a weight map that defines which points should follow the simulation - and how strongly so.

If you only want some jiggle effect, it might be easier to use a jiggle deform on the points in question - faster for sure, since FEM isn't exactly mind blowing quick

Marc

Ok, ill check this out and see if i can make it work thanks for the reply and all. I have been using this tutorail before, for regular cloth that was. But i will try to use your tips for my new project
thanks again

Moin,

I assume you solved your problems by now - but just to complete and follow up on my promsie to publish a walkthrough on how I do cloth sim for the Trollbridge project, here's the video:



Maybe it is helpful (although it is pretty much straight forward anyway)?

Marc