1913 Glider v3 - Wing Cover v2 using the Collision Deformer in C4D R13

Sunday morning brought about a flood of thoughts concerning wing design, as stated in previous posts I've been giving a great deal of thought to. Sunday morning upon waking seemed quite a... revelation for me, I think would be a good way to put it. I'll save that for another post.

Onto the Wing Covers v2 for the 1913 Glider v3

So Sunday - I again tried to make the wing covers using the Collision Deformer in C4D R13. And when all else fails - sometimes you have to toss it all out and start over from a different direction. And so I did.

And here is the result.

The rib grooves were left over exaggerated in the cover so you could see them more clearly.

How was it done:

The simple explanation is I used the Collision Deformer on the Wing Cover plane on un-bent Ribs.
Then converted it to an object and finally bending it with the Bend Deformer.

I did it two ways. The above using a Box for the Fall off and the below using Infinite for fall off.
The above used Inside Stretch and the below Inside.
Both had a high subdivision number on the plane height, around 400 and 40 for the width.

The high count on the height brought the subdivision size closer to the width of the Rib. Once the rib was centered to it's perspective... gosh what the term... loop of faces? Where it meets the plane. (see above) The plane where it is collided by the Ribs will give a better edge. Less of a curve and lay flat on the top of the Rib instead of "Peaking" or rounding over the Rib.

I also did an experiment to see if I could animate between a relaxed Wing Cover and one that would look like it was in flight.

Again I started with the plane and rib clones and used Infinite for fall off and a high Subdivision on the Plane.

The wing cover is semi-transparent and the ribs semi-luminent just to help you see what is going on.

The above is in it's flat state - neutral I guess you say. Flat as a board.

This is a showing the Wing cover in fully Relaxed state using Inside setting in the Collision Deformer.

The above is the Wing simulating flight. The air would have pushed it up and curved the cloth. This is using the Outside setting in the Collision Deformer. 

If you try this yourself - This is not how it will show up if you do this. This is modified and I'll get into that briefly. The difference being , if you create this yours will show up as they collide at the bottom of the Rib and on top of the Wing Cloth. That is normal - that is what the difference between Inside and Outside Collison is.  The bottom of the rib would collide with the top of the plane. And if you try this yourself that is what you'll see. Again that is normal.

But that wouldn't look right. The cover is on the outside and it has to remain on the outside in both the relaxed state and in the in flight state. So... I changed it to do so.

And that was the thing to accomplish - getting it to switch back and forth between an Inside setting and an Outside setting with-out moving the contact point. in world space. Normally it would switch from the top to the bottom of the rib - Inside - top of the rib, Outside- bottom of the rib... back an forth, One would have the ribs on top of the Wing Cover the other on the bottom or under the Wing Cover, got that? I want the Ribs to stay under the Wing Cover - fixed to the under side really - as if they were glued to the underside.

I think I achieved that. And here you can see via a small animation the cross fade between the two (Inside and Outside setting) with the Wing cover remaining on the top of the Wing Ribs - once I figured out how to do this, the animation was fairly easy.

At this point or perhaps all along, you may been asking, "Why am I using the Collision Deformer instead of the Cloth tag?" Well for few reasons actually.

For one, for a still image or a simple simulation of flight - This should be fine.
Secondly - I'm not that familiar with the Cloth tags in Cinema 4D, and especially on how to go about pinning the cloth the way I want. I have been playing with that while learning and playing with the Collision Deformer. So, I'll be getting into the cloth tag soon enough. Next post on the wings actually.

Till then, Happy rendering

- chase -