1

I'm trying to create this peeling wallpaper effect:

enter image description here

The idea is that each section of wall paper has a curve modifier that slides on the X axis until it completely curled up.

What I was hoping I could do is drive the location of the all the curves with the surface of an object with geometry nodes tree that raycasts to the object's surface and then sets the position of the curve there. However this doesn't seem to work - the curve moves as expected but doesn't effect the wallpaper object. I wonder if this is because geometry nodes exports mesh of some kind and the curve modifier needs a curve object to work.

I also spent a day trying to do the entire process within geometry nodes (which would obviously be better in the long run) but this seemed even harder. Could elaborate on this effort if its helpful. The key problem I kept running into is that there is no way(as far as I can tell) to distribute instances on points in a way that preserves their custom properties, such that those properties can be expressed variably after the instances are realized. And there is no way to distribute a bunch of identical objects without instancing them. Just to give my two cents - this is a problem I've run into a bunch in geometry nodes. I wish there was some way of distributing on points without instancing such that custom properties dependent on proximity/index/etc could be expressed after distribution.

Link to .blend: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wEl5Gj09XACbZ-zCmr-o4Zwe0Q_5hUNl/view?usp=sharing

Thanks for reading!

James Siewert
  • 123
  • 6
  • 1
    Possibly of interest .. https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/283792/35559 – Robin Betts Aug 03 '23 at 18:27
  • Yes! This is great. The solution you found to change from splines to the spirals is much better than mine which didn't preserve their length and involved manual tweaking.

    Of course the trick would be to figure out how to have the "Wrap End" value respond variably based on geometry proximity - maybe by instantiating the property after the instances are realized.

    In the meantime I have resorted to the brute force of having each spline parented to a separate armature bone. It's inelegant but and is taking a while to set up but at least I can control everything by adjusting a single value.

     – James Siewert Aug 03 '23 at 19:35
  • Hi, @James I'm being dim ... I'm not getting the function of the Geometry Proximity.. what effect are you looking to achieve with that? – Robin Betts Aug 03 '23 at 19:52
  • No - I'm sure I'm not being articulate. Like basically imagine this egg animation - if you didn't want all the "petals" to unwrap at the same time but rather based on how close they were to some object's geometry.

    The final effect I want is wallpaper starting to peel up on one side of a room but eventually peeling up all over the room.

    Thanks again for your help!

     – James Siewert Aug 03 '23 at 20:57
  • @JamesSiewert The problem with geometry proximity solution is, you need to detect being close at a particular frame, but since you don't roll back when the object moves away, you need to maintain state = simulation (and geometry nodes support simulations). However it can be done in a simpler way, just weight-painting the geometry, marking the order of unrolling, I do similar stuff here, but with dissolving: How to move instances so that they move from a certain point and finally create a face – Markus von Broady Aug 04 '23 at 08:18
  • @MarkusvonBroady agreed.. (state v process) although I suppose you could set up a latch in a simulation.. James: Would a pre-set variation in timing be acceptable? – Robin Betts Aug 04 '23 at 11:17
  • @MarkusvonBroady I actually don't mind if it rolls back, because I plan on driving this the influence object by scale and maybe shape keys (assuming that will work with geonodes) And the effect isn't quite meant to be photorealistic. I've uploaded my work in progress animation so you can see the effect im going for.

    https://youtu.be/ztD5kim817s

    Basically if you look at the wall in the background I'm trying to refine these elements and I think the paper peeling is the most lacking. But this staggered growing and shrinking is intentional and should be built into the system. Thank you!

     – James Siewert Aug 04 '23 at 12:40
  • Quite a psychedelic animation :) It always bothers me, when a character in a movie disappears, but we don't see the veins and other structure of the body as a result… It's done better in the new Blade Runner, but there's no structure too as it's a hologram but it is a 3D hologram… – Markus von Broady Aug 04 '23 at 14:54
  • 1
    Hollow Man still the gold standard! A lot of those effects hold up beautifully. – James Siewert Aug 04 '23 at 15:06

0 Answers0