Falling 3d blocks to stack text - how to? In Cinema4D or Maya

Ein

Hey guys, quick question that might be a little out there.

I am looking to duplicate the style of the logo animation as seen here at 1:40:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoFYEtj2tDw&t=1m42s

I have a machine available to me that has Cinema4D and Maya both on it, but I have very little familiarity with either. I'm wondering if, in general terms, one could describe to me how to use either of these tools to go about making a 'falling-blocks-stacking-into-text' effect, so that I had some idea of how and where to start.

TychoCelchuuu

Particle effect of a bunch of blocks flying past the camera plus hand animated logo built up block by block.

edit: in Maya. I've never used C4D.

Ein

The hand-animated part was what I was concerned with. :P I was curious if there was a shortcut around such a tedious method, like maybe having the blocks all stacked at the start and then sucked up by some reverse-emitter doodad, and then played in reverse.

symbolsor

Which version of Maya are you using?

Ein

I am not at the computer right now but i am pretty sure it's Maya 2010.

symbolsor

I'm not sure if this will play with Maya 2010, but it should? I'm using 2009.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13105100/animationTest.mb

You have the right idea, this was created using dynamics. Here's some step by step stuff:

1. Create a new scene
2. Create the cubes and line them up however you want
3. Select the cubes and freeze transforms (modify>freeze transforms)
4. Go to the 'Dynamics' toolset
5. Select all the cubes (you can drag select all of them)
6. Go to fields>gravity and click the *options* button.
7. Change the Y direction to -1, I also changed the Z direction to -.2 but that depends on if you want the cubes to go back and up or just up
8. Click apply
9. If you hit the play button now the cubes should go up, if they didn't I'm a terrible tutorial writer and I'm very sorry =(
10. Select the cubes again (make sure not to select the gravity thing too!)
11. Go to fields>turbulence (*options* again)
12. I changed the magnitude to 100.00, you can play around with it though
13. Noise ratio was also at 1, I'm not sure if I changed that though?
14. Hit play!
15. ????
16. PROFIT

Step 15 is probably where you'll want to go in and reverse your animation, I'd do that in After Effects or something.

Edit.
Re-reading your post I realized that my post isn't super helpful, there isn't much stacking going on in mine. >_<

Ein

While it's not a stacking effect, it is better than anything I've come up with so far. Thanks for that.

schuss

Maybe confine them in 2 static objects that prevent them from rotating so they fly up and down on a linear plane?