Animating Falling Bins with Real World Dynamics
 

PLEASE HELP!!

ok its like this... ummm is there a way to use the dyamics simulation to accurately make the bins fall as an object hits it...
ive tried and tried but when i solve it they just fall all over the place and it looks stupid... i.e. when i use gravity and like the push modifier to knock over the bins... they just fall and jitter all over the place...
anybody have experience or tried this?!?

Thanks...
D-MIX

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GO ANIMATION TEAM.... RETURN TO THE LONELY CORNER, FROM WHENCE YOU CAME!!!

look into reactor.


it's a really nice plugin and might help you out a little bit..

otherwise all i can say is look into some tutorials

*jeremy

With reactor, I would suggest using gravity as the main force rather than anything else. Basically set some value for y and make the surface a rigid body. That will basically act like your push modifier and make the bins fall on their own. It's actually pretty simple unless you get into making only some bins fall and others not :P

As another differing opinion, I'd say eyeball it as best you can. Film some bins falling with a video camera and keep it handy while you animate. Last year I "eyeballed it" animating some soccer balls going into a goal and got very good feedback about it on this forum. Play with it. If worse comes to worse, conveniently "forget" your original plan to knock over all the bins and cut the camera at a point when everything still looks real. Reactor sounds like another good suggestion. I;ve never used it so I can't help there.

last year ...i'll say that your team's animation rocked...and should have won... but eyeballing it...wow! reactor is awesome...I'm not sure if you have looked into that capabilities of reactor. Your eyeballing was insane..but reactor can do it 100% faster...and you can add cool forces like friction and wind resistance. Look into reactor..it rocks.

I want to see that animation again, I didn't get no stinkin dvd with all the animations on it. And yes, Reactor is super cool but it can be a pain to work with sometimes, though it's still faster, better, and more realistic than eyeballing it.

Sorry.

Thanks for the support. I was really angry/upset/shocked last year when I discovered we were DQ'd. Autodesk claimed our entry was late... I know it was not. Also we were missing a 5 second black frame on the non-credits version. The past is the past. I will upload the animation to my comcast webspace and post the link here shortly. I always love a chance to share my work ;).
I will look into reactor as well. Any ideas for good tutorials or soemthing?
Thanks,
Brandon

Our 2002 Autodesk Vizualization Award Entry entitled "Impact" is availalble for download at:
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/brando...mpact_2002.avi
(Right click and choose Save target as...)
The file is 13mb so be advised!

Enjoy watching!
-Brandon

Oh yeah, I remember this animation definately. You posted it before Nationals last year along with a bunch of other people. You were the top on our list of competition. Good work! One thing I always wanted to ask, where did you get/make that music sample? Fruityloops or just something you found? I ask cause it seemed like you were one of the very few teams that had something original in terms of music. We decided to only include very very very minute music in our animation cause frankly we suck at it :(

Reactor is awesome, if slow on my 1ghz POS. Any one try the crowd modifier? These two really help with all the details. Our animation involves a bunch of swarming nuts, so the crowd helped us make it somewhat realistic. It is somewhere on my webpage, but i think that file crashes max, so i won't post the link yet...

We have a talented digital/traditional musician on the team. He does all of the sound in Cakewalk and Acid Pro. I will pass on the praise.

Acid Pro is pretty cool too, I've been getting into Reason a lot. It's a great synth/riff factory type music software, I suggest it to anyone willing to try out a great piece of software.

Reactor Tutorials
 

currently I have probably the best physics student in the school working on reactor (i don't think he needs this program to figure out the equations) but here's a couple awesome features:

1. rigid body dynamics (objects can crash into each other and bounce off...without intersecting in any way. Also the heavier (mass) of an object the more moentum it has.

2. Sofy body dynamics things bounce but is much more useful if one has things that need to be made of foam or cloth. Very realistic for animating clothing.

3. Toy car (oh yeah) Tired of rotating those pesky robot wheels. Add a toy car...pick your wheels and your chassis. Give your robot a mass and let her rip. The wheel rotate by themselves(almost) and it makes animating so much easier.

4. Finally take some time to explore..basically projectile motion,angular velocity, friction, wind resistance..can all be animated...and it only takes about 5-10 hours to go through the whole tutorial book (and then let the good times roll).

Also the crowd feature that some one was talking about... imagine this (1 stadium...1 robot....10,000 screaming fans...all moving independently....and 2 days to render on a decent render farm...let's just hope it works.)

Re: Reactor Tutorials
 

Haha, I'm honored....
A few things I've found as I've been working with reactor:

1. Setting the tubs as "Inactive" allows them to be stacked without falling down/exploding (yeah, reactor is really... odd... sometimes). It also allows for an object, such as a robot, to hit the tubs and make them topple.

2. Play around with toppling objects to make sure none of your tubs, etc. are "hovering" above each other (Did I mention reactor can be wierd at times??).

3. Soft Body objects probably won't be too useful for mechanical models, but could work wonders for objects such as a cushions, humans, etc. - especially if you want them to deform for any reason...

4. If you have to work on a computer that can't handle the demands of reactor for detailed objects, try playing around with animating helpers and then linking the actual objects to the helper when it comes time to render it (hopefully you'll have at least one computer that can handle complex reactor things...).

5. MOST IMPORTANTLY USE THE TUTORIALS!!!!!!!! THEY HELP!!!!

Thanks for the tips. Do you have a solution to keeps bins from crossing into each other. Perhaps the collision tolerance? Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.
-Brandon