Flexi Flags

I've been trying my luck at building flexi flags.

So what? You will say, and I would have said the same thing myself, but for one thing. Virtually any country can successfully create a flexi flag if the flag texture is symmetrical about all three axes. That's a no-brainer.

There are, however, a few flag textures that are NOT symmetrical about all three axes. I'm from Canada. The Canadian flag is symetrical about only two axes.

Hence, I can create a flexi Canadian flag, but it always fails on one single point. On one side of the flag, it appears as it should. On the other side, the Maple Leaf is upside down.

If I flip the orientation of the texture on one side, it flips on the other side as well, so the same problem exists, just in reverse. I have attempted a dozen solutions to this, and they have all failed. I can only create a rigid Canadian Flag.

Does anybody have any idea how this can be fixed, or, more to the point, IF it can be fixed?

I hate to be picky about this, but it is an offense in this country to deface the flag. That includes displaying it upside-down.

Select Texture will allow you to adjust the textures on individual prim faces. For example, on your Canadian flag, you put the texture onto the prim. Then go to the face that has the flag upside down, select just that texture, and flip it. The other side will stay the same, and you'll have your flag.

You've got to be kidding! Well, it won't be the first time I've been foiled by clicking the wrong mouse button. Sculpties ground me down for a week before I found out I was clicking in the wrong texture window. Thanks much, Quidditch! I love this game. I learn something new every day

What settings are you using for the stiffness/flexibility of your flags? I would be very interested in knowing what settings make an even vaguely realistic cloth flag.

I once tried making a simple "diver's flag" - a square of fabric attached on one vertical edge to a pole. When I made it flexi, the opposite edge drooped down all right, but it streached the pattern in an arc that made it look worthless. The lower edge became much shorter than the upper edge.

I didn't bother playing with the settings at that time, as I decided to just stick with a rigid flag for what was, in the log run, a very minor prop in a marina that I was making.

That's an interesting point Ceera. The answer would be having the ability to control which axes were flexi, so that a flag would bend side to side, but not up and down. Perhaps that should be a feature suggestion on JIRA?

Don't quote me on this, and I'm not in world to check, but I seem to remember when I cobbled together some flags that decreasing the gravity and upping the reaction to wind seemed to help the realism a tad. I must get back to that and the million other projects in my head.

Wasn't directed at me, but I'll answer anyway This is what I used for a flag. The texture isn't distorted that much, even when the flag hangs down:

Softness: 1
Gravity: 1
Drag: 2
Wind: 5
Tension: 1
ForceX: -0.57
ForceY: -0.03
Force Z: 0.07

You might need to play a little with the three Force values, depending on the direction of your flag and the wind (wind gets stronger with increasing height afaik, so a flag on top of a high tower will behave differently).

Thanks Aleister, these are good to know. After experimenting I still found it hard to predict exactly what various combinations would do, but it was fairly easy to significantly reduce the distortion.

At first I thought this might address my suggestion that we be able to remove certain axes from the effect. Although it did kind of do that, it wasn't absolute. Flexi is still a mystery to me!

Having played about with flexible movie screens (don't ask) the only thing which upsets the fixed settings, is the SL wind is a variable. What looks good now, will change dynamically. Gravity setting will pull your flag downwards causing droop, tension will lift it back, but you need to play with the X,Y, Z settings to get the right motion.

Torley made a video tutorial on making a flag a while back: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuBlYNcZdrg

(It's burried in the KB somewhere, but it seems we can't link to those anymore)