dForceMagnet UserGuide

this is a video guide for the d-force magnet if you prefer written tutorials please see the PDF that is also included with this product it will contain the same information as this video this is an overview of the topics which are covered in this user guide if you're looking for a specific topic please use the time markers to jump to the spot where this topic is covered the first topic is about preparing the interface and the scene so you have all tools on your screen that you're going to need then I'll explain how to set up a magnet and then I'll cover frames and keyframe basics and if you're familiar with the timeline in that studio you can skip this chapter I will also cover some do's and don'ts for searing out values if working with a timeline animation and then I'll cover how to have a magnet active without influencing the fabric for the first part of the simulation and I'll also show you a handy trick for precise positioning of the magnet first of all make sure you have all necessary tabs on your screen you will need the timeline which I like to dock here the tool settings tab which I dock here and the simulation settings the default magnets work with default items so I need to make sure I have a default item in my scene I have this fabric plane which is just a primitive generated with this menu here so I need to set it up as a default item and I add the default modifier for a dynamic surface if you're using a ready-made default item a clothing item or a hair then you can skip this step now I have to pick the places where I want my magnets to grab the fabric so first I make sure I have the fabric selected and I select this tool here which is the geometry editor and you can also find it in the menu here in tools geometry editor then I go to my tool settings tab and the geometry editor has three different modes which is polygon edges and vertices and we need this one the third one the vertex selection mode and to be able to see what I'm doing I switch to wire shaded and I zoom in on my fabric and now I select one vertex the vertex is a point like this one or this one or this one I choose this one here and I go to the library and activate my create defaults magnet script in this dialog I can choose the orientation the rotation of the magnet and this is important when you have a skirt or any other fabric that is hanging down then you can adjust the magnet in a way so that it doesn't stick inside the fabric in this case the default orientation is fine and I can also choose the size and right now size five is fine for me I hit accept I selected the fabric again and move to the other corner I still have the geometry editor selected so I click again to select a vertex and I run the script again I keep the orientation and I have a second magnet added to my fabric now I'm going to use these magnets to drape the fabric around this cylinder and I'm using the timeline for this and as you can see I've set my timeline to use 60 frames by default it loads with a setting of 30 these frames are not seconds we have this value here frames per second and it's set to 30 that means 30 frames are only one second so what I have here is two seconds I recommend using more than 30 frames for a default animation with magnets because when you move a lot of fabric and this is not exactly tiny this is one meter by one meter the program just needs a bit more time to process the movement we also need some frames at the end of the animation so the fabric can settle down and drape properly so trying to achieve all this within one second would be asked a bit too much it does work in many cases but you get smooth movements and nicer draping when you give it a bit more time so that's why I'm using 60 frames for this project here so now I select my first magnet this one and I create a keyframe using this symbol here and I move it to frame 10 and I move the magnet to a different position closer to the cylinder as soon as you change the position the rotation or the size of an object that studio will automatically create a keyframe for you in the timeline so make sure you are at the correct position in the timeline when you change an object and the transition between two keyframes will be calculated automatically and I moved to frame 20 and I move the magnet again and again in frame 30 and they also change the height so when I scrub this slider here I can't check in the movement make sure that you don't move the magnets through other objects so I'm moving this around the cylinder and I make sure it's not going through it also when you wrap objects when I'm moving this one from this side over here I need to make sure that it doesn't move through the cylinder and that it doesn't go across the fabric itself that would make the simulation fail I want this one to start the movement a bit later so I move it now in frame 15 and because I forgot to set the keyframe right at the beginning of the animation it doesn't move so I put it here because I want it to start later with a movement and I go here to the parameters tab and I go to restore restore selected items pose so that moves it back to its original position you could also go here to the parameters tab and set these sliders manually to zero there is a way to zero a slider in that studio which is holding down the Alt key and clicking the slider but this would delete the value for the whole timeline so when you're doing animations do not do this unless you really want to delete this value across the entire animation also when working with d-force magnets do not use the zero commands from this option menu these zero selected items this command would also remove the default functionality you would lose the magnet effect and also when you go to restore use the restore selected items pose do not use this one the restore selected items because this would switch it back to being visible in the render in case you've used this or otherwise changed this value for visibility there is also preset to make it invisible in the render again okay so I position this now I check this to make sure they really move side-to-side and not through each other okay that seems to work I have already set up my fabric with a friction set to the lowest possible value so that it doesn't stick to the floor so much and I have set a low density so it moves more easily you can find presets for that also in your library so I go here to my simulation settings I select simulation and I make sure I have the settings start bones for memorized pose this could be on or off right now because we have the zero pose right at the beginning of this animation and we need the animated use timeline play range and now I hit simulate and the fabric moves and so without the help of any additional software I have draped the fabric inside that studio now let's say I want to add a third magnet here to pick up the fabric about in the middle of the animation and move this part a bit more how can I do this I go back to the zero state because you need to add the deformers in the zero pose of each item so just to find where I want to put my magnet I'm going to select it here in the draped State so I switch back to the geometry editor and I pick this vertex here and I go back to the very first frame and I create another magnet now I want this magnet to get active only here in this frame now if I had it active right now it would influence the simulation so I needed to move with the fabric without doing anything and then starting its action only here in the middle of the timeline so I need to find the correct positions for this magnet I can go by eyes so I move it here I like to use this Universal transformation tool so I can just estimate where the vertex will be in the course of the animation okay let's zero that in the very first frame we need it to be on ceará position now let's see what happens now this is not too bad but it does influence the fabric you can see here it causes these folds to appear it makes another fold here so it does make a few changes to the fabric if I don't want that there is a trick to find the exact precise positions Izu min on this magnet I select the fabric again and I go back to my geometry editor tool and I switch to the tool settings tab and I go to this first mode to the polygon selection and I choose this polygon here I go to this entry selection sets right-click create selection sets from selected and let's call it helper and then I use the I symbol to make that invisible this doesn't change the surfaces or the geometry in any way it just makes this little polygon invisible so this is my marker because I know the magnet is attached to this edge to this corner of the polygon and now I make it invisible and run the simulation when the magnet is invisible it will not influence the simulation unfortunately in that studio you cannot switch the magnets on and off during a simulation that would be the simple solution it's not possible due to a technical limitation so we need to find a workaround so this is the simulation as it would look without this magnet active so I make it visible again and now I can position it very precisely for each frame at the beginning of the animation there is usually a lot of movement in the fabric so the first few frames will need more adjustments than the later ones you so now I have the magnet floating over the fabric following this vertex it's attached to without dragging it anywhere and now when I have reached the moment where I want the magnet to be active I change its position if you want to drop the fabric you have to move the magnet down through the fabric attached to it also moves down and now let's see what this looks like so here it picks up the fabric moves it a bit closer to the cylinder and drops it again and before you render make sure you go back to the tool settings tab with the geometry tool selected select the fabric and make sure you switch this one on again so you don't have a hole in your fabric with these simple tricks you can create complex animations complex fabric movement and I wish you lots of fun

Channel: esha

Views: 21,063

Keywords: daz studio, dForce, user guide, RiverSoft Art, esha, dForce Magnet

Id: vttMJkJvpCA

Length: 20min 42sec (1242 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 30 2019