Settings for a flexi prim?

[Marcus Hancroft]

I am wanting to make some cattails that blow in the wind.  I've got the prim textured and ready to go, but, there are so many options in the flexible path section.  Softness, Gravity, Drag, Wind, Tension and Force X, Y and Z.  Anybody know what the settings are for all those to make this tall grass blow in the wind?

Thanks in advance!

[Caer Balogh]

Torley's

video tutorial explains many of the settings. Experimentation is really the way to go.

[Rolig Loon]

You'll want to use a negative value for Gravity, so that the cattails always point up instead of drooping, and you'll want to keep Wind set rather low (probably no more than 1.0) to keep them from whipping aroiund too much.  Moderate settings for Drag and Tension will also help make them slow to respond.  You can ignore the Force settings, since they won't do much for you at all.  Just play around and see what looks good.

BTW, you can't link anything to the flexi end of a prim.  If you try, it loses its flexiness (if that's a word). That means either making your cattails out of a single prim or having only the topmost part of a cattail flexi while the lower part is rigid.  It would be ideal if we could make sculpties flexi, but that's not possible yet.

[Void Singer]

softness: how much it "wave" it can have in the middle, opposite of stifness.

gravity: the ammount and direction the gravity tends to pull/push on it (expressed as region +/- z)

drag: how much to slow movements (limits "wagging")

wind: multiplier to be affected by region wind (which is a region x/y force)

tension: how strongly it reacts to movement

force x/y/z: the *region relative gravity to apply in a particular direction.

 

ETA:
*sorry, force is region relative, not prim or object relative, correted above

[Marcus Hancroft]

 

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Rolig Loon wrote:

You'll want to use a negative value for Gravity, so that the cattails always point up instead of drooping, and you'll want to keep Wind set rather low (probably no more than 1.0) to keep them from whipping aroiund too much.  Moderate settings for Drag and Tension will also help make them slow to respond.  You can ignore the Force settings, since they won't do much for you at all.  Just play around and see what looks good.

BTW, you can't link anything to the flexi end of a prim.  If you try, it loses its flexiness (if that's a word). That means either making your cattails out of a single prim or having only the topmost part of a cattail flexi while the lower part is rigid.  It would be ideal if we could make sculpties flexi, but that's not possible yet.

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Howdy, Miss Rolig!

Thank you very much for your help.  I took your advice and worked the settings as you suggested.  My cattails look great moving in the wind like they do now and, I learned something new in the process!  Thanks again!  :smileywink:

[Marcus Hancroft]

 

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Void Singer wrote:

softness: how much it "wave" it can have in the middle, opposite of stifness.

gravity: the ammount and direction the gravity tends to pull/push on it (expressed as region +/- z)

drag: how much to slow movements (limits "wagging")

wind: multiplier to be affected by region wind (which is a region x/y force)

tension: how strongly it reacts to movement

force x/y/z: the *region relative gravity to apply in a particular direction.

 

ETA:

*sorry, force is region relative, not prim or object relative, correted above

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Thanks so much for the explanation of what each of those settings do, Miss Void!  This helped me a lot figure out how much I they needed to "wave".  :smileyhappy:

[Rufus Darkfold]

If you have a linkset with a number of flexiprims that you want to set, you may find this script useful.

http://community.secondlife.com/t5/LSL-Scripting-Library/primset-bulk-prim-property-setter/td-p/714501

One copy in the root prim can set or read anything that llSet(Get)LinkPrimitiveParams can do, for itself, all chidren or any subset specified by number or name.   Click on the object to open a chat channel (which times out after 5 minutes).

I have a HUD in development that works with this script.

[Liana Halostar]

Thanks Void. I found this post because I had the same question but everybody keeps saying "just experiment" or "watch this video." All I wanted was a simple, straightforward answer to a simple, straightforward question but you're the only one who seems to understand that.

[Void Singer]

I just have an oddball way of looking at things, and a little skill making sense of them in other peoples terms.... the people who told you to experiment aren't wrong, they're probably just more visual and don't have a good language to describe what they see. you're still going to want to experiment, to see how much effect those things have, but hopefully my descriptions above mean a little less experimenting before you get where you are looking to go.