Today, we look at using soft body dynamics to age a Moai statue.
The polygon Moai.
Here is the Moai statue that we have used in videos on 3DbyBuzz.com. It was made out of stone a long time ago. It has sat in the open on a wind-swept, treeless island for many hundreds of years.
Turning the Moai into a soft body.
We set the Main Menu selector in the top left corner of the Maya Main Window to Dynamics.
Then we select the Moai, go to Soft/Rigid Bodies and choose Create Soft Body.
Now, our Moai will be influenced by dynamic forces.
Introducing a field.
Now, with the Moai selected, we go to Fields and Select Turbulence. It is not shown here, but the Magnitude of the field is about 40 – not too strong. We don’t want to blast our Moai away. Also, the Phase x and Phase y settings of the Turbulance tool are set to -1.
Before and after.
This is the Moai before running the scene:
Here is the Moai after running about 100 frames.
The turbulence has gently eroded the nose and the mouth and the jaw.
If we want, we can move the turbulence field around and age more of the Moai’s face.