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Unread 03-02-2003, 07:48
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Soukup Soukup is offline
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AKA: David Soukup
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Join Date: May 2002
Location: Grand Valley State
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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.)
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2003 Great Lakes, Midwest, and West Michigan Regional Animation Award Winner