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Shoe interactively squishing in the Cinema 4D viewport with Deformations

Deformations can sometimes be a lot of work, especially when it comes to keyframing realistic movements. This technique shows you how to interactively deform your objects when colliding with a surface. I’m sure this could be taken further but the concept and initial spark are what I’m focusing on here. The mesh deformer is one of the most powerful deformers in my opinion. Here we supercharge with Xpresso to limit its deformations based on point position. The Xpresso is fairly simple and only deals with deforming the mesh’s points via the point node to make sure they don’t go past where they are supposed to.

The second trick is getting the shape back to its original position which is done with another incredibly powerful tool, the Pose Morph Tag. This gives the mesh we are deforming a place to bounce back to so that we don’t destructively edit the deformers shape. I would love to hear how you guys use this or build upon it in your projects! Grab the scene file below and take a look under the hood:)

Cinema 4D Xpresso layout to limit point position

I’ve also gotten a good number of questions on how the bend deformer setup was done on the toe of the shoe. It’s a simple xpresso setup that ties the rotation of the shoe to the bend strength shown in the images below. The trick is to place the bend deformer in a good spot for deformation. If you have further questions feel free to shoot me a message:)

Xpresso Setup

Range Mapper Settings

Screen Shot 2019-07-11 at 9.19.43 AM

7 Comments

  1. Hi! Can you please share your set up for the bend deformer? I am also using this for a shoe spot, and that would be so useful! I’d love to see how you set it up and what you meant when you “tied it to the rotation”. Is it using the same expresso set up? Are you using the same mesh for the bottom of the shoe and for the bend deformer? Any insight would be great! Thanks for sharing!

    • Hi Alex, I’ve updated the page to show a little more about the Bend deformer setup. Let me know if that helps:)

      • Hey, sorry to ask for more detail, but I can’t seem to get the Bend deformer to work. I’ve tried several configurations of the deformer, but when I rotate the shoe, it does not bend the shoe. Followed your instructions exactly. Could you share where you put the bend deformer on the shoe and the parameters you used please?

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