How do i model a crumpled piece of paper?

[booboo4ever]

okay kids, i got the ultimate question . . .

how do i model a crumpled ball of a piece of paper? it is going to be in a slow motion shot, and it is going to come right at the camera, so it has to look photoreal cause everybody will get to look at it very carefully!

so far i have experimented with the sculpting tools, turning the surface into a soft body and adding a turbulence, and a few other things. nothing really gives me a nice look.

ya, this is silly as hell i know, but . . . any ideas are welcome

[trazor123]

Well I consider myself a proficient modeler, but honestly I have thought of the complex geometry of crumpled paper, and it almost frightens me.
Sorry I can give no help- if I weren't so green to the newer Maya I could come up with a script or some filter which I'm sure you will eventually get here.

Good luck!

[mantrid]

exellent question....and yes, there is a fairly simple answer....make a flat sheet...default geometry scaled to your liking....and turn it into a cloth object with the right sort of stiffness...then, you can use a volume axis field or volume newton to scrunch the cloth object up (pull it to centre)...just make sure you have set your self collision nicely. If it lokks too smoothly crumpled like cloth instead of paper, just lower the cloth res and re-run the simulation. Then, pick a frame at which you like the lok of your scrunched up ball, deletey history and remove the cloth controllers...there ya go...scrunched paper ball

[joojaa]

or if that fails do a flat plane and split polygon object at the folds and manuely fold the vertices by fotating them along a fold (and everything beyond).

Now to find out how folds appear crumple a paper unfold it and take a look. Note that the cloth version is much faster to do but this one yealds much better results.

[tito212]

My god you guys...cant believe you guys would try and make it seem so difficult...
I have done this before and have gotten excellent results from the following.

• Make NURBS plane with a decent amount of U and V divisions.

• You can make basic folds into the model with clusters. Select CV's, move the pivot point to the folding hinge point of the paper. And adjust weights of cluster as neccessary

• Then once you get the basic form. You can use Maya Artisan's paint sculpting tools to add more detail into.

This workflow is has alot more control then trying to use cloth and draping it over some displaced geometry. You are just wasting time, electricity and your life waiting for cloth to do something like that.
I had to make a piece of paper crumble itself up and also an aluminum soda can crumble itself up and this is the best and EASIEST way. Its that difficult. Really.

[mantrid]

I was not suggesting that you "Drape cloth" over anything...try reading the post. What I was suggesting was deforming the object using a dynamic field, and having the cloth control makes it act in the way it does for real, and not stretch or anything....thats realism. Maybe you need to make yourself familiar with using dynamics, you obvious have never used volume fields before.

Anyways, I'm sure your method is just dandy also....though mine takes roughly 60-90 seconds from start to finish and looks absolutely real like a scrunched up ball of paper...seeing as that is precisely what it is....and I just tested the theory just to be able to quote "60 to 90" seconds...I thank you

[joojaa]

Tito and how does that differ from my way... except that i would get a more optimal surface! But yeah i tested the cloth thing and it was a breeze!