Subtitles of the Movie

It is possible to have multiple deformations on a single object. In this project we have a cylinder that I want to deform into a plumbing pipe. If we look at the model's Deformation Editor, we see that it has two deformation regions. Each region contains a Bend Deformer. Both regions bend along the Y axis and distort the X axis. The only difference between the two are the regions' Min Max Values. And now I'll turn them on and you can see that each region is only large enough to contain the bend. That's what keeps the rest of the pipe straight. As you can see in our front view, the two regions do not overlap. In most cases, it's best to not have multiple regions cross over each other as you may get unexpected results. The overlapping regions tend to have a push-me-pull-you effect. And we have to have two regions, not just one region, with two Bend Deformers because the deform must happen in two separate areas. Now we have the pipe. It would be great to have some water flowing through it. The other cylinder in this project is the water, which is created by more deformers. Let's turn it on and I'll turn off the pipe for now. And we'll look at its Deformation Editor. We have three regions in this case. The stacking order of the regions is very important. Region 3 has the Run Wave Deformer and it's supplied to the entire model. It's at the top of the stack regions because I want it to have priority. I'll turn off the other two regions for now. I've animated the Run Wave so that it looks like it's moving from bottom to top. Let's look at the options. I'm animating the Y Offset from zero. Let me go to the end of the animation. And it goes all the way to 1100. Let's preview in the Front Window. So our flow is correct. Now I'll turn on the other two regions, which have Bend Deformers just like the pipe. And now the water is flowing through our bent shape. The mesh is pretty dense so I've pre-rendered the animation so we can get a better look at it. And play it. Now let me put the Run Wave Region, that's Region 3, to the bottom of the stack and I also have a pre-rendered version of that. And the water flow doesn't move around the bends of the pipe correctly. So the Run Wave Deformer needs to be on the top. In other words, Animator deforms with Run Wave in the top region, then it bends it once in the middle region and bends it again in the bottom region. Deformations are calculated top to bottom. I mentioned in the last chapter that you can create a loopable flag animation with deformers. In this project I have a plane that has two Linear Wave Deformers. Let's look at one of the deformer's options. Basically the Linear Deformer creates a simple sign wave that can travel through the model so you can get that flag rippling that you want and because it's a fixed distance between the waves, you can get the repeatability. What's animated here is the Phase Value, which shifts the entire wave form across the deform axis. Let's close that. I also have a second region with its own linear wave. It's traveling at the same speed so that they repeat at the same time. The only difference is their Amplitude Values. And each one is rotated differently. Let's play a render of this animation. Nice and it loops. You don't get the same controls as you have in the Flag Plugin, but in a pinch this can work. Probably for a close-up on the flag for a background animation. You could probably improve this more by adding more Linear Wave Deformers offset in space. But they're phase animations would have to arrive at the same time. One last piece of advice; try to remember that you're distorting a region of the model. That region can be bigger or smaller than the actual geometry. In the case of this fake flag, the regions are larger than the model itself. If you plan your animations with the discreet regions in mind, then you'll be able to achieve some amazing results.