Rubber Band Ball

[ghostlight]

Howdy! Made this for OfficeMax ads. Modeled using ClothFX bands, which were then corrected and extruded. Rendered in 9.5.

Cheers!

-Dave

[T-Light]

Well done, these sorts of things are a right pain to get looking right and you've certainly managed it. Nice idea on cloth fx and extrusion (Last time I did something like this I did by hand, very tedious).

Very nice job :thumbsup:

[novawave]

NIce trick Mr D,..

btw is there any animation of it?..

it got to be cool(weuw what kind animation you done on this?.a whole rubberband in the world, reunited in one place and glued each other and became birth for a new planet?lol)

cheers

[Chrusion]

A wee bit more info please... Cloth FX bands... is that like making a whole horde of rings, placing, rotating, and scaling randomly on top of a sphere, then running the dynamics sim so they shrink down and collide with each other? Then you extruded the lot to give thickness. Yes? No? What?
.

[scratch33]

very good pic. Love it.

Yes, more info please...

:thumbsup:

[ghostlight]

Hey there! Thanks for the comments.

I started modeling by hand, but it took way too long and there were gaps and intersections. (first picture)

To model the ball with dynamics, I had a ball set as a collision object. One rubber band object, a simple ring of polys, was given Cloth FX with polysize set to 80%. When calculated, the band would shrink and wrap around the ball.

I saved a trans object of the band wrapped around the ball, opened in modeler, fixed any intersections and closed any gaps, then extruded the band (using William Vaughan's thicken technique: ftp://ftp.newtek.com/multimedia/movies/w3dw/Thicken.mov) and added poly loops for sub-patches. I pasted that rubber band object in with the ball object and switched back to Layout.

In Layout, the ball collision object now has the first modeled rubber band included. The single band object (the one made up of a simple ring of polys) is still in the scene with cloth Fx. Randomly rotate the band and solve again. It shrinks around the ball AND the first modeled rubber band. Save that trans object at a frame that looks good, in Modeler fix intersections and gaps, extrude, model it, paste with the ball & and object.

Rinse, repeat, and keep adding rubber bands until you feel like drinking cyanide. (second, third picture)

[Andyjaggy]

Hey that's cool.

[ghostlight]

You can see the ball rolling at the end of this video (small on youtube, sadly):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1rZqw5bXb4

When it rolls left to right in the beginning, it's a real ball we shot turning on a drill gun against white. I made the 3D ball just in case the client wanted it rolling any other way. At the last minute, they indeed wanted it rolling the other way, so I used the 3D ball at the end where it rolls right to left and reveals the OfficeMax logo.

Around the office, we thought it'd be fun to have a guy move the ball with his mind and send it flying through his buddy's chest. ThwACK!

[Larry_g1s]

Very cool GL. The detail in the texture, and lighting sell it.

[Bliz]

Yeah the modeling is great but the 'rubber' material with it's small life-like bumps really sells the realism.

Great work!

[ghostlight]

Thanks! Here's a 1:1 closer shot, for those of you who can't open the giant first picture.

[david.figueroa@]

Super Cool

[Darth Mole]

One of the best - and simplest - images I've seen here for ages. Just excellent.

[Matt]

I love the colours in this, so vibrant, and the modelling technique is awesome!

[alqadi]

sweet :)

[A Mejias]

Very COOL model! Love it!:thumbsup:

But you know, you could have used a reversible drill gun. Or even run the clip in reverse. :)

You can see the ball rolling at the end of this video (small on youtube, sadly):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1rZqw5bXb4

When it rolls left to right in the beginning, it's a real ball we shot turning on a drill gun against white. I made the 3D ball just in case the client wanted it rolling any other way. At the last minute, they indeed wanted it rolling the other way, so I used the 3D ball at the end where it rolls right to left and reveals the OfficeMax logo.

Around the office, we thought it'd be fun to have a guy move the ball with his mind and send it flying through his buddy's chest. ThwACK!

[ghostlight]

Yeah, we could have reversed the footage if we'd shot it properly. Here's how things went:

We planned on the rolling direction in advance and filmed the ball spinning on the drill and stopping. We rotoscoped that and animated it to match the rolling speed, which isn't very flexible. I modeled the rubber band ball in 3D in case the client requested different rolling directions, such as toward screen, which would have been tough.

They did. We had to make the change very quickly, so I decided to use the 3D ball, which gave me infinite flexibility in how it rolled to a stop. It also allowed the ball to move through spatial lighting. We didn't tell the client the ball was 3D.

[evolross]

Cool techniques. Great image. Nice work.

[Konidias]

Rinse, repeat, and keep adding rubber bands until you feel like drinking cyanide. (second, third picture)
So you ended up basically making it like you would an actual rubber band ball. That's awesome. :D Nice work!

[freshdb]

what a fun image! :thumbsup:

[vampmaster]

THis is simply GREAT

[Garyrw]

This is such a simple, yet completely effective model! The texture on the rubber bands makes it so powerful and realistic. Really good use of colors to!

I'm simply amazed and inspired!
~3DG.

[ghostlight]

Hey everybody! My rubber band ball is Picture of the Month in the newsletter! Check it out:
http://www.newtek.com/lightwave/newsletter.php

[Larry_g1s]

Hey Congrats Ghostlight.

[allabulle]

Hey there! Thanks for the comments.

I started modeling by hand, but it took way too long and there were gaps and intersections. (first picture)

To model the ball with dynamics, I had a ball set as a collision object. One rubber band object, a simple ring of polys, was given Cloth FX with polysize set to 80%. When calculated, the band would shrink and wrap around the ball.

I saved a trans object of the band wrapped around the ball, opened in modeler, fixed any intersections and closed any gaps, then extruded the band (using William Vaughan's thicken technique: ftp://ftp.newtek.com/multimedia/movies/w3dw/Thicken.mov) and added poly loops for sub-patches. I pasted that rubber band object in with the ball object and switched back to Layout.

In Layout, the ball collision object now has the first modeled rubber band included. The single band object (the one made up of a simple ring of polys) is still in the scene with cloth Fx. Randomly rotate the band and solve again. It shrinks around the ball AND the first modeled rubber band. Save that trans object at a frame that looks good, in Modeler fix intersections and gaps, extrude, model it, paste with the ball & and object.

Rinse, repeat, and keep adding rubber bands until you feel like drinking cyanide. (second, third picture)

Excellent image! And great technique, btw. Thank you for sharing it.

[WilliamVaughan]

Ellegant...very impressive...you should turn it into a CGSphere.com

[ghostlight]

Thanks William!

[Stransh]

nice modeling technique, thanks for share.

why not rotate the still of this ball in your composing software?

[ghostlight]

If I rotated a still of this image it would look flat because the lighting would rotate with it when it should stay relative to the space. Plus, I wanted to be prepared if the client wanted the ball rolling toward or away from camera, which would be impossible with a still.

[Amurrell]

Cool technique and image!

[zapper1998]

Wow, Amazing how something, So Impressive and Cool looking, Can become so popular....

Michael

[Mrjack]

Wow realy cool and amazing
great great great
and thnx for sharing
now in lightwave 9.5 the cloth_fx is more powerfull and stable

[palpal]

Some of the renderings in here are just amazing... looks really good...

PAL :thumbsup:

[W@v3r4dd1ct]

Very COOL model! Love it!:thumbsup:

But you know, you could have used a reversible drill gun. Or even run the clip in reverse. :)

LMAO

dat could work i think
cyas

[ghostlight]

Running the clip in reverse wouldn't have worked because we had to have the ball slow down and stop. We filmed the real ball on a drill starting from a stop and speeding up, which we reversed to have enter from one side of the screen, slow down, and stop. Reversing that clip would have the ball start instead of stop.

We should have filmed it rolling the other way, but didn't. When the client asked to have the ball change direction, I'd already modeled this 3D ball just in case. We just didn't feel like filming the ball again, capturing the footage, animating its translation to match the rotation, and rotoscoping.

Plus, we thought it'd be fun to see if the client could spot that it was a 3D ball. They didn't. =)

[Schwing]

Wow, how wonderfully playful. The ad video is is a work of art.

Curious, when animating the ball rolling, did you add some vertical movement since its surface wouldn't be smooth like a regular ball.

[ghostlight]

I thought of giving it a bounce, since it's an uneven surface, but since it's supposed to be an elegant logo, I gave it a smooth motion.

[RollerJesus]

I saw this image on a truck advertising Office Max in Chicago last week, it looked great. The lady sitting next to me on the bus probably was wondering about the smirk on my face...

[ghostlight]

WHAT? Are you serious? That's awesome. I just thought it was for a web video. Cool! Or maybe it's been their logo for a while...

[Mark The Great]

Just a few minutes ago, I saw one as well.

There were several balls flying around (with kind of tacky motion blur) on the side.

Great render! :D

[RollerJesus]

Just a few minutes ago, I saw one as well.

There were several balls flying around (with kind of tacky motion blur) on the side.

That's the one!

[HowardM]

Rinse, repeat, and keep adding rubber bands until you feel like drinking cyanide. (second, third picture)


cool, but why didnt you just make several ribbons wrapped around the ball and sim them all at once, then extrude? ;)

sorry, didnt realize how old this thread was :D

[geo_n]

This saved me at work today. Thanks for the tip:thumbsup:. Had to do it in 1 hour. Max guy was modelling it manual. :D:D:D:D Asked me to do it in lw.
Remembered this trick. I tried it in 9.3.1 but after a few loops it was getting slow. Tried it with 9.6 and pleasantly surprised clothfx seems upgraded. And saved transformed saved it in subd. :thumbsup:

[ghostlight]

Awesome! Glad it worked for you, and great story. I'm going to think of Dynamics for modeling more often. Yay!

[Gary Wales]

Well, Kudos to you! It looks fantastic. I had a go myself, and by jiminy you need patience - the continual intersections that I had to address in Modeler! I gave up!

[ghostlight]

Yeah, it takes time doing each band separately, then fixing the intersections in modeler, but it's better than doing ALL the bands by hand, which I tried first, and quickly realized that would not work.

[HowardM]

not sure if you guys know this but you can use Collision Offset to make a 'cushion' around each set of 2 point chains so they dont intersect.

you should be able to simulate several chains to do multiple rubber bands at once this way, so you dont have to painstakingly fix so much in modeller.

to make life even easier, you could make the 2pt chain straight in modeller, then morph it over one frame to wrap around the ball, that way you can easily extrude a metalinked thicker rubber band...