In this tip we're gonna take a quick
look at how you can and create some cool effects using the Collision Deformer. we start off by a creating a Collision Deformer it's here in the Deformers menu... and it's been here ever since release 13 I believe, so you'll need at least Cinema 4D R13 to do this tutorial. The way the Collision Deformer works
is that it deforms whatever object is in its hierarchy so the simplest way to use it is to
place the Collision Deformer as a child of another object or place it as a sibling in a Null Object or something like that. So now that the Collision Deformer is in the Plane, nothing actually happens yet; we need to say: "which objects are going to collide with this Plane in order to deform it. There's a 'Colliders' menu here... so we can take our Cube then drag our cube into 'Colliders' and then you get that sort of an effect. Now at first it doesn't look great because we have some tweaking to do.
Let's just see what's happening on a frame by frame basis. it looks like it's starting to deform
the object... it's doing that really well and if we go one frame at a time, the minute it hits the midpoint it sort of changes its mind and starts to
deform upwards instead so as it deforms upwards we see that the solver actually flips on itself and
says, "okay let's let's obviously the cube is coming from beneath" So this is... kind of a glitch but I think we can
use that to our advantage so if we play it back one more time we can see how it happens. and we can essentially say to ourselves,
"Alright we want to improve this effect!" The first thing we can do is go to the
advanced tab and change the stiffness. A lower stiffness will sort of make it
easier for the object to make a dent in the object that's being deformed so that's one thing we can do. Another thing we can do is go to the object tab and tweak the 'Restore Shape' option. so if we change restore shape down to
zero, we'll see what happens he just stretches right through so it's not really the effect we want
but it gives us an idea of what we can tweak so if this was forty percent instead we see that it's sort of is less of an
aggressive rebound it goes through and then it pops right back out
but it doesn't happen instantaneously it takes a second you can see it
stretch right here below. So another really cool thing that you can do to make this pairing sort of interesting,
is to change the falloff so currently the falloff is
automatically calculated. I've just paused it as it's entering the material what we can do is go to the Collision Deformer's Object tab and change the falloff. These options here are what the falloff
curve is going to be a relative to; so think of 'UV', 'Distance', 'Surface', and 'Collider' almost like additional solvers, these are
additional methods that the Collision Deformer is going to look at when applying our spline so just for speed's sake,
I'm going to set it to 'Distance'. now keep an eye on the way it's deforming as I... change this... [drags the curve handle] so if I put this part of the curve up high... it does create some jagged edges;
some sharp transitions but it actually makes a bulge i'm gonna play it back right here so we can see that bulge; it's actually bulging up into the object to that falls through that's kind of cool, because
some gooey substances may give the impression that
they behave that way so if we put this back down to zero
where it belongs and then create more points by holding down the Control key while clicking... you can create a hump up like that and then sort of valley down here so we can create sort of a valley like
that. So now if we play it back, we get a really interesting effect!
It's almost like it's it's going down then up at the same time and if we let it play back we get an
interesting sort of blob... so we can do is; make that
a little bit less extreme add some more points to make sort of a diminishing wave... and we can see that we're creating sort of a sort of an interesting entry point and we can make it look a little bit different the change
in the falloff from 'Distance' to 'Surface' See how it sort of changed the way it behaves and then we can also choose 'Collider'.
So 'Collider' is the slowest according to the documentation, but you can
see that it's the most accurate it [the simulation] really starts to slow down when you use 'Collider', but it's a really cool effect now we can tweak the effect further
by going to the advanced tab and changing these (settings). For instance, the effect with a very low stiffness sort of changes it becomes sharper. And with very high
stiffness it becomes more rubbery so there should be some interesting effects
you guys can make using this tip, but I just wanted to call attention to the curve property here for the collision
the former because it provides some really cool
opportunities for tweaking what the collision actually looks like! And it actually takes the shape of the Cube. If I were to rotate the Cube so it hits the surface at a different angle, the entire effects gets changed. its going really slowly right about now so let's try changing that falloff method to 'Surface' and see if it runs a little more quickly. Yeah, there you go. But it completely changes the
shape we're dealing with and uh... I hope you guys enjoyed that tip! Until next time, see ya!
