Dynamics simulations can be a powerful tool when trying to generate realistic looking effects that would be very difficult to achieve manually. In this tutorial you will learn how to use nDynamics’ passive colliders and ncloth objects, in conjunction with fields like air and gravity, to easily simulate realistic dynamic objects such as a windy flag or a water container.
Every few weeks, we revisit some of our reader's favorite posts from throughout the history of the site. This tutorial was first published in November of 2009.
Final Effect Preview
Step 1
Go to “Create > Polygon Primitives > Plane”.
Step 2
Create a plane that matches the size of a flag and rotate it by ’90′ degrees.
Step 3
Open the Attributes Editor for the plane, name it, and increase the “Subdivisions Width” to ’30′, and the “Subdivisions Height” to ’50′.
Step 4
Your plane should now look like this:
Step 5
Go to “Create > Polygon Primitives > Cylinder”
Step 6
Position the cylinder, and scale it to match the size of a flag pole.
Step 7
Select all the top faces of the pole.
Step 8
With the faces still selected, got to “Polygons > Edit Mesh > Extrude”.
Step 9
Extrude those faces until you get a nice pole shape.
Step 10
Select the top vertex of the pole.
Step 11
Use the move tool to position the vertex.
Step 12
Go to “Window > Rendering Editors > Hypershade”.
Step 13
With “Create mental ray Nodes” active, create a new “mia_material_x”.
Step 14
Open the Attributes Editor of the material you just created, name it, select the preset called “Copper”, and adjust the “Diffuse” and “Reflection” colors accordingly.
Step 15
Apply the material to the pole.
Step 16
Go to “Window > Rendering Editors > Hypershade” again.
Step 17
With “Create mental ray Nodes active”, create a new “mia_material_x”.
Step 18
Go to the Attributes Editor of the material, name it, and decrease the “Reflectivity” value to ’0′.
Step 19
Click on the checkerboard button, to the right of the “Diffuse” color value, to open the “File” browser window.
Step 20
The Attributes Editor should now change. Select the image you want to use to texture the flag.
Step 21
Apply the material to the flag, and with the flag selected go to “Create UV´s > Planar Mapping”.
Step 22
Select the option highlighted below so you can see if the texture looks good.
Step 23
If your texture looks bad like mine, go to “Create UV´s > Planar Mapping (settings)”.
Step 24
This will open a new window where you can change the projection axis to whatever works for your scene, and then click “Project”.
Step 25
Your flag should now display the texture correctly.
Step 26
Select the flag, and in the “nDynamics” menu, go to “nMesh > Create nCloth”.
Step 27
Increase the number of frames of the animation.
Step 28
If you play the animation now, you will see that the flag just falls down. This is because the flag is not attached to the pole.
Step 29
Rewind the animation.
Step 30
Select the flag, and in the “Window” menu, go to “Show > Isolate Select > View Selected”.
Step 31
You should now only see the flag, which will make it easier to work with.
Step 32
Select all of the vertexes that you want to be attached to the pole.
Step 33
In the “nDynamics” menu, go to “nConstraint > Transform”.
Step 34
Select the flag, and in the “Window” menu go to “Show > Isolate Select > View Selected” this will make everything visible again.
Step 35
Select the pole.
Step 36
In the “nDynamics” menu, go to “nMesh > Create Passive Collider”.
Step 37
If you play the animation, you should now see the flag hanging from the pole. This is realistic, but an unmoving flag is not very dynamic, so let’s add some wind.
Step 38
Go to the Attributes Editor of the flag´s “nucleus1”, and in the “Gravity and Wind” section, change the following values:
Step 39
If you play the animation now, it should look pretty good. All you need to do is smooth the polygons by pressing ’3′ on the keyboard (with the flag selected).
Step 40
Perfect! We are done with the first section of this tutorial, just don´t forget to save your scene!
Step 41
Create a new scene, and go to “Create > Polygon Primitives > Plane”.
Step 42
Create a square plane.
Step 43
Go to the Attributes Editor of the plane, name it, and change the “Subdivisions Width” to ’50′, and the “Subdivisions Height” to ’50′
Step 44
Go to “Create > Polygon Primitives > Sphere”.
Step 45
Create a sphere and position it very high above the plane.
Step 46
Go to “Window > Rendering Editors > Hypershade”.
Step 47
Make sure you have “Create mental ray Nodes” active, and create a new “mia_material_x”.
Step 48
Go to the Attributes Editor of the material, name it, and change the following options:
Step 49
Apply the material to the ball.
Step 50
Go to “Window > Rendering Editors > Hypershade”.
Step 51
With “Create mental ray Nodes” active, create a new “mia_material_x”.
Step 52
Go to the Attributes Editor of the material, name it, and decrease the “Reflectivity” value to ’0′.
Step 53
Hit the checkerboard button to the right of the “Diffuse” Color value. This will open the file browser window where you can select the image that you want to use to texture the plane.
Step 54
Apply the material to the plane.
Step 55
Select the plane, and in the “Polygons” menu, go to “Create UV´s > Planar Mapping”.
Step 56
Select the plane again, and in the “nDynamics” menu, go to “nMesh > Create nCloth”.
Step 57
Select one vertex from each corner of the plane.
Step 58
With the vertexes still selected, go to the “nDynamics” menu, and choose “nConstraint > Transform”.
Step 59
Select the ball, and in the “nDynamics” menu, go to “nMesh > Create Passive Collider”.
Step 60
With the ball still selected, go to “Fields > Gravity”.
Step 61
Increase the number of frames of the animation.
Step 62
Position your camera.
Step 63
Play the animation.
Step 64
The plane should just stretch instead of tearing.
Step 65
Rewind the animation.
Step 66
Select the faces of the plane that you want to tear.
Step 67
In the “nDynamics” menu, go to “nConstraint > Tearable Surface”.
Step 68
You should see some dots covering the faces you selected.
Step 69
If you play the animation now, your plane should tear naturally. End of tutorial! Hope you liked it!!
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By Alan Monroig
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Wow, very effective looking!
XD nice simulation!! thanks i was looking for this.
Brilliant tutorial…. I love the final outcome… would have been more awesome if there was a video version of it as well but thank you for it nonetheless…
looks good.
Thank you very much for the tutorial. It was very helpful.
I actually like the picture tutorials for 3D stuff, for me it is easier to follow along with.
Very nice tutorial…thanks
Thanks! to all of you
One more cool tut from maya, thanx for sharing Alan, I will definitely follow this tut if I have enough time for it
Thank you very Much!! Daniel
Nice and quick tutorial, but this is way to basic for a site like CGTuts. The steps shown not even explain 1% of the complex nCloth system in Maya and if you need such a tutorial to model a basic flag or tearable cloth, you’re really at the VERY beginning of learning Maya. That, though, is not what CGtuts is for, at least what I think of it. Reading the very good maya help files are sufficitent for such simple stuff!!
Please focus more on intermediate tutorials, which are mor innovativ and maybe even teach the experienced users some new techiques instead of such newbie stuff!
Thanks,
Chris
It is basic for nCloth , but it is not basic for Maya in general, there is a lot of people that know Maya in depth but not nCloth, and there is also a lot of people in cgtuts+ that is starting learning Maya and this type of tutorials help them a lot. I wished that when I was starting to learn maya I found a site like this with tutorials for beginners all the way through advance.
I am sure there is a lot of people that liked this tutorial, and that is what matters!
Greetings,
Alan Monroig :)
Both valid points. I think we need to have stuff on here that caters to all levels of users, but I will certainly take your comment into consideration Chris, and try to get some more high-level tuts going for Maya soon.
Would a tutorial like this for 3DS Max be in demand at all? If so I can publish a pretty in depth one for next month.
It really is a great and in depth tutorial, and I could convert it for cinema 4d too, although cloth dynamics are a little wonky lol.
I agree……..is very nice and quick tutorial.
Basic ? Basic for who ? There are many people that they being interested in to learn the possibilities of Maya.
CGtuts is not only for experts
very basic tutorial.
not even explained a single step.
ROBOTS!
Is it the place for basics?
This is great Thank you!
It is not basic! It is great. And perfectly explained
ok now you tell me
why he chose mia_material_x not mia_material ?
Because mia_material_x is ready to upgrade if you want to render with passes. But the texturing of the objects like the flag and the pole is not the topic of this tutorial.
Great tutorial Alan, it was very helpful.
I still don’t understand why there’s always people complaining about this or that, if they don’t like the tutorial or already know the content they shouldn’t comment.
to Alan Monroig
well that’s my point.
mia_material is just an example. A little explanation would help to understand.
And a little line would not deviate your topic.
Ok :) I will explain better in my next tutorials, thank´s for the feedback.
What future tutorial would you like???
Thanks
well thanks for taking it positively.
I would like any tutorial which helps to understand nucleus system of maya
thanks.
it’s really good
thank u.
It’s really an excelent tutorial. I followed the first example and it worked well
:D
Thanks! I am glad you like it!
Nice details in your tutorial. It was very easy to follow. Some of the ones on here skip around, leave stuff out, or don’t even seem like they were proof read.
Good stuff.
Remember :
“The beginner of today is the master of tomorrow”
thanks well done ……… Xandi
Remember:
“The beginner of today is the master of tomorrow”
thanks Alan
keep up the good work ………. Xandi
Alan. you really are a l great teacher. I’ve learned a lot from your tutorial.. they all are awesome! Please keep it up :D
Nice tutorial…I learn from this one, and I have a question…How can I save the animation like an avi.?…thx
Thanks, to save the animation as avi you will need to export the video from Maya as a sequence, and then in a compositing software like after effects you need to render that sequence in the desired format.
its a great job
Step 15
Apply the material to the pole.
Im a newbie here. Can anyone tell me how to apply material to the pole?
Stucked.
just press and hold the right mouse button over the object and go to “assign existing material” and select the one you created before.
What If I would like the flag to be released from the pole at the end, how would I release the constraint that is holding the flag to the pole? any ideas would help a great deal
very helpful tutorial
i made my first animation.. yay ;)
Nice tutorial, but i am a really beginner and i don’t have the create mental ray in my maya 2010… is this some kind of swatch plugin? how could i add this? I am really worried couse shading is not my thing…
Ayway thanks for this tutor!
^_^
I’ve tried the second part of the tutorial twice now and the ball just keeps falling throught the cloth/plane. What is wrong?
Daniel O You don’t make ball a passive collider
This is great, and i must ask can you send me this .mb file?
Thank you so much for this tutorial, it was very very helpful, I will post my video on my channel here http://www.youtube.com/user/criso1994?feature=mhee
why does when i play the animation on the flag my texture doesnt stick to the cloth. it just tiles the texture
Oh nevermind i got it. i just applied the texture first before applying the ncloth
everythhing is fine but when i play it, texture is changed its place and texture is disturb.
ok i got my probelm .i just applied the texture first before applying the ncloth