clothing, hair, soft bodies etc...

you have an animation that lasts 300 frames, you designed the shot, you've planed out the audio, you animated the movements.

You hit play or render and the first series of frames have the hair exploding and settling into their respective models.

Why?!!!

Why can't this just be done as part of a prebuffering sequence that starts before frame one so that when the first frame of your animation starts, all the physics are in place?


Ibis Fernandez   |   (available for hire)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Professional Animator, Filmmaker | Creator of the highest quality (modular) G2 rigs for cartoon animator and developer of Toon Titan and Puppet Producer 
Author of Flash Animation and Cartooning: A Creative Guide
>>> be sure to check out http://toontitan.com for professional grade assets, templates, and custom tools for Cartoon Animator and more.

Yea Ive wondered the exact same thing. You have to preplan your animation to start 2 seconds after the video starts. And if your using indigo those two secs can be an easy hour of your life your not getting back (thinking of wolf's indigo example here). Its a similar story for particles, particularly smoke/fog.

Yeah, its very wasteful and severely limits the way one can coordinate the use of 3rd party tools. Like i would also have to adjust myself for this in my after effects projects as well and any preproduction audio and visuals that get imported.

None of the mocap stuff that is out there takes this amount of wasted time/space into account so you end up with extra unnecessary work to readjust the timing. Or in new mocap stuff, you have to make sure you capture x amount of dead space just to account for your hair and clothing exploding and settling down before you can actually act.


Ibis Fernandez   |   (available for hire)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Professional Animator, Filmmaker | Creator of the highest quality (modular) G2 rigs for cartoon animator and developer of Toon Titan and Puppet Producer 
Author of Flash Animation and Cartooning: A Creative Guide
>>> be sure to check out http://toontitan.com for professional grade assets, templates, and custom tools for Cartoon Animator and more.

An easy solution would be to allow negative values on the timeline. I've seen that in several 3D packages. All simulation needs time to settle so that would take care of that.

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I seen this done on many 3d software.

- Select the starting frame. (usually this is frame 1)
- Click the simulation button and you get asked you get asked how many frames you want to run the simulation for, such as 30.
- After the simulation has run for the desired number of frames, the final state of the simulation is the first frame of whatever animation sequence you are working on.

If the starting point of the simulation is not satisfactory, just run it again, maybe for 100 or 200 frames this time.


Ibis Fernandez   |   (available for hire)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Professional Animator, Filmmaker | Creator of the highest quality (modular) G2 rigs for cartoon animator and developer of Toon Titan and Puppet Producer 
Author of Flash Animation and Cartooning: A Creative Guide
>>> be sure to check out http://toontitan.com for professional grade assets, templates, and custom tools for Cartoon Animator and more.

Does the output range work for Indigo? That's what I do to avoid exporting a render of the hair going "Boof". If I set my range from 30 to 1800, or something, then I have a clean beginning.

Just remember to not put any animation in the first second (or as many as needed).

This is something I would support as long as it's a switchable option. I actually prefer the way it starts, and if the dynamics were made to start already settled, it might add an annoying wait every time you press the play button.

So for me, it's a good idea providing it can be switched on and off.

+1

This is a common settings to have. In lightwave its just a checkbox with start frame

Reup. I've just tested physics in Iclone today. This is badly needed.