# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Soft Body with wind

|previous=Simple Cloth Animation 
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## Prologue

This is the **Blender wind and soft body tutorial**. This tutorial will
try and help your knowledge of using Soft Body and the Fields and
Deflection panels in Blender 3D. (For best results, I recommend you use
Blender version 2.43 or higher). Don't forget to save your work at
various points throughout the tutorial.

## Setting up scene

### The plane

Delete the default cube \[X key, or yes, even the Delete key\] and enter
Front view mode \[Num. Pad 1\]. Add a plane, scale 3 times \[S key, 3,
Enter\] and sub-divide 4 times until you get something like the shape
below. If your computer can handle more, and you want more, sub-divide
as many times as you like, but if your PC is struggling with this, undo
once or twice.

![](Soft+wind.JPG "Soft+wind.JPG"){width="700"}

### The wind items

TAB out of edit mode (if you haven't done so already), enter side view
\[Num Pad 3\] and add an empty. Clear the rotation \[ALT + R\] and
rotate it 90° \[R, 90\]. Place it about -5 from the centre \[G, y, -5\]
and make sure its still in the middle of the X axis. Your scene should
look like the picture below:

![](Soft+wind2.JPG "Soft+wind2.JPG"){width="700"}

For the second wind item, add an empty like before and clear its
rotation, but DON'T rotate it any more. Move it along the Y axis by 4
places \[G, Y, 4\] and -10 by the Z \[G, Z, -10\]. And now your scene
should look something like this (with all items selected).

![](Soft+wind3.JPG "Soft+wind3.JPG"){width="700"}

And that's all your items you'll need for this. Onto the harder part.

## Designating each object\'s job

### The plane

Now, the plane will become a soft body, so enter the Object Panel
\[F7\], click on the Physics Button (beside the three arrows, see second
picture below) and click on the soft body button. You will get a load of
boxes, but we only need to look at the Grav, Goal, and the bottom parts:

![](Soft+wind4.JPG "Soft+wind4.JPG")

Change the values of these as shown above. Change the Aero part to 732
(if you go up to 1000, it changes the final output by a bit).

Now, click on the Soft Body Collision tab and click on the Self
Collision and Deflection buttons. You don't need to change any of the
numbers here. The buttons window should look something like this:

![](Soft+wind15.JPG "Soft+wind15.JPG")

Now we will move on to the Empty items which will be the wind.

### Creating the wind

The two empty's we created earlier will be the items that will act like
wind, and when you render at the end, they will be invisible, just like
the wind. Anyway, select one of the empty's and enter the Physics panel.
Click on the box under the Fields and select "Wind". (Blender 2.5+ note:
First you will have to choose \"Force Field\", then change the Type to
\"Wind\".) Change the Strength to 20, click on Use MaxDist and change
MaxDist to 2.5.

![](Soft+wind16.JPG "Soft+wind16.JPG")

Do the same for the other empty. Your scene should look something like
this:

![](Soft+wind5.JPG "Soft+wind5.JPG"){width="700"}

## The movement

This is probably the most complicated part, but shouldn't take long.

### The Empty on the left

In side view \[Num pad 3\], select the empty on the left and do the
following: 1. Press \[I key\] and then select LocRotScale from the list
it gives you. This inserts a key frame, saying that on this frame, keep
the Location, Rotation and scale the same throughout the rest of the
movie, unless it comes across another key frame, which might tell it to
move or stay the same. Now, press the Up Arrow Key until you get to
frame 31 (about 3 times). If you don't know where the box is that tells
you what frame your on, check the following picture:

![](Soft+wind6.JPG "Soft+wind6.JPG"){width="700"}

Number 1 shows the current frame number and the name of the selected
object while number 2 shows the current frame and allows you to change
the frame with the arrows on either side.

### Back to the movement

On frame 31, select the empty on the left (the one selected in the
picture above) and press \[G key\]. Now press \[Y key\] and press "4",
then \[Enter key\]. Now press \[I key\] and select LocRotScale again.
Now, if you press and hold the Left Arrow Key, you should see the Empty
move back to its starting place. Now, to check the curve guide (called
the \"IPO Curve Editor\"); right-click on the top panel (number 1 in
picture below), then select \"Split Area\" and click when the line is a
bit out from the side (number 2 in picture below).

![](Soft+wind7.JPG "Soft+wind7.JPG"){width="700"}

Now, click on the box (shown below) and select \"IPO Curve Editor\" from
the menu.

**Noob note** In Blender 2.6+ the **IPO Curve Editor** has been replaced
by the **Graph Editor**, which allows you to edit F-curves.

![](Soft+wind8.JPG "Soft+wind8.JPG"){width="700"}

This window just shows where the key frames you entered are, and how
much the shape changes, moves or rotates. Now, go back to frame 1 and
press \[ALT\]+\[A\], which plays the animation. You should see the
\"wind\" hit the sheet and the sheet will blow away. Pretty nice, huh?
Now, it would be fine like that (I'll show you how to get rid of the
blockyness in the last part), but say you want to hit the sheet again
and send it upwards? We will use the second empty for this.

Select the second empty (the one on the bottom). Insert a key frame (\[I
key\], LocRotScale) on frame 1 and frame 50. Go to frame 60, grab the
empty and move it up 8 places (\[G key\], \[Z key\], 8). Insert a key
frame (\[I key\], LocRotScale) and then go back to frame 1. You have
completed the basics, and the most of this tutorial. Now, press
\[ALT\]+\[A key\] and watch your animation.

## Finishing touches

### Blockiness

Now, to sort out the blockiness, go to the Editing buttons panel \[F9\]
and select the \"Set Smooth\" button.

![](Soft+wind9.JPG "Soft+wind9.JPG")

Now if you preview again (\[ALT\]+\[A\]) you should see the plane is
smoother, but might be a bit unrealistic (i.e. not acting like real
cloth). Now, that can't be helped, the only way to get rid of it is to
subdivide the plane several more times, but that will put a LOT of
strain on your computer, so I wouldn't recommend doing it unless your
computer can handle it.

### Background

First of all, got to the Scene panel \[F10\] and over at the Format
panel, change SizeX to 400 and SizeY to 300. Now, to change the
background colour when you render, go to the shading panel \[F5\] and
select the World buttons. Now, in the World panel change HoR to 0, HoG
to 0.80 and HoB to 1.0.

![](Soft+wind10.JPG "Soft+wind10.JPG")

All that does is just changes the background colour to a brighter, nicer
shade of blue. Now, I'm just getting a bit lazy, so I'll just explain
this part with a picture: (don't forget to select the plane).

![](Soft+wind11.JPG "Soft+wind11.JPG")

Change the values and press the buttons shown in the picture. This will
change the colour of the plane to white.

The only problem now is the light. Press \[F12\] and you should see what
I mean. There\'s no light shining on the plane where the camera is, so
its just shaded dark. To fix that, select the light and go to the
shading panel \[F5\]. You now have options for the light. Click on the
\"Sun\" button and press \[ALT\]+\[R\] to clear rotation. Now, in side
view \[Num pad 3\] press \[R\] and then type -45. Enter top view \[Num
pad 7\] and press \[R\] and then -45. This now shines the light in the
direction of the plane, but, if like mine, the light is above the plane
in top-view, press \[G\], \[Y\] and then -5. The line coming out of the
light source should be roughly pointing at the centre of the plane.
Here's what your window should look like:

![](Soft+wind12.JPG "Soft+wind12.JPG"){width="700"}

The pink line is the light. This was taken in camera view \[Num pad 0\].
Render the frame and you should see what the final product looks like.
Move to any frame you want and press \[F12\] and it will show the
rendered image for that frame. Now, rendering the entire animation
might, in fact, will take a long time unless you have a completely new
PC, are using a big server like DreamWorks (one of the big PC's, used
for rendering images faster) or have a quicker renderer, I don't use any
external renderers, and am stuck using a PC that is about 2 years old
(in other words, full of junk). It took my PC less than 5 minutes to
render 100 frames, and the last 25 were just blank (as the plane just
flew above the camera). To change the amount of frames to render, and to
render the full animation, here's what you press:

![](Soft+wind13.JPG "Soft+wind13.JPG")

The box that says End:100 lets you select what frame you finish
rendering the animation on (NOTE: the Sta:1 button lets you select what
frame to start rendering the animation). When you press the ANIM button,
it starts rendering the animation. The Box covered in blue, that says
Jpeg, lets you change the format of the image in the end.

To export the animation as an AVI format, select the AVI button shown
below, then press OK. Now, you need to Animate the sequence again, so
press the ANIM button again.

![](Soft+wind14.JPG "Soft+wind14.JPG")

The finished.AVI will be saved in a folder with the rest of your
rendered images. It should be saved in a folder called tmp, which (on a
Microsoft computer) is in My Computer/tmp. The name of the file will be
whatever your start and end frames are, so in this movie, mine is called
0001_0100.avi. You can now do whatever you want with your movie now, and
hopefully you have learned a trick or two that will be helpful later on
in your Blender career.

## Final result

Here is an animated.gif of my final result: (imported into Macromedia
Flash and exported as an animated.gif)You are required to be an auto
confirmed user or uploader. I made a gif with a frame-step of 4.
![](Soft_body_wind_blender_2.76.gif "Soft_body_wind_blender_2.76.gif")

