Spiderman Project HELP!!! - Maya 8.0

[Yuriynyr]

hey guys im a student at the new york film academy, and i am crazy so for my last project, i chose to do spiderman..... lol

i will not have any problems animating, but the question is how can i make his webbing come out of his wrist?

i have no idea on how to do it but the things i should keep in mind is that....

1. spiderman will hold the web
2. the web will be dangling around (or animated)

my instructor said i will need a lot of mel scripting and probably use soft and rigid bodies but he isnt sure himself yet..

my question to you guys is... How would you make it if you were to animate spiderman?

any help would be so greatly appreciated and help me with my project a lot..

thank you all in advance, Yuriy K.

[Jelmer]

welcome to the community yuriy, hmm that is indeed quite difficult to animate in a realistic way, i'm not too experienced with maya but it should be similar to max.. I'm not really a spiderman fan myself so i don't know how the webbing looks and works, it also depends on what you want the webbing to do, if it has to interact with objects and characters maybe?
If it's dangling around you can probably use cloth (or soft bodies, which are quite similar) and then texture a mesh with an opacity map to create the webbing look, to help you along with animating/rigging it we'd need some more information on what you want to do exactly.

[Yuriynyr]

ohhh i see... well one major aspect of my animation will be spiderman swinging through a city using his web. he will also dive from a building down to rescue someone falling which he will then use his webbing to get himself closer to that falling person. thanks..

[Jelmer]

alright, for the shot with spiderman swinging through a city using a web you could probably have a sort of dummy/target to which the webbing is rigged, so when you move the dummy/target towards a building the webbing will follow it and also remain connected to spiderman's hand. You could try using bones that stretch, this tutorial might help:
http://www.learning-maya.com/t_rope.php

i don't really understand the second thing you're talking about, how does het get himself closer to the falling person?

Sorry for not helping out a lot, but this should give you a basic idea of what you could do.

[Yuriynyr]

no no you helping me.. im not explaining clearly thats all..

i guess if i get the webbing that he uses to swing through a city, then the second part will be fine... i will try that tutorial... thank you very much.

PS. I love this site and will recommend more people to it... thanks again,

Yuriy K.

[patrick514]

Hi,
I had the same problem with my spidey,m I used a cylender(in 3d max) and i animated it and deformed it with the track bar recording, I added a flex and it works well for the shot. My cilender was liked to the hand and I'd make it appear at the right time. I don't know maya but in 3ds max if u go to the objet propiete u can play with the renderable level...sorry for my bad english.
PAT