Dynamic rigid bodies

# 1 02-03-2004 , 04:35 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Jul 2002

Location: Stuttgart, Germany

Posts: 16

Hi out there,

I have a question concerning dynamic rigid bodies. I know maya is not basically a physical simulation engine, but since it does some of the stuff really nice and easy I came up with an idea and wondered if it's possible and how I would have to set it up. OK, here's the plan:

I have a rigid body and attached to it four cubes like tires to a car. Now I want to animate the tires, i.e. turn them like there is an engine attached to them (ok, so far no problem). But now I want to let the vehicle be pulled down to a passive rigid body as a ground by gravity and let the friction move the vehicle forward.

Maybe it's easy, but I couldn't make it work yet. Any suggestions?

user added image

Quote

# 2 02-03-2004 , 06:13 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Sep 2002

Location: Minnesota, USA

Posts: 3,709

There are many melscripts out there that allow you to setup car physics, and even just the rotating wheels alone, based on car movement.

This can be done, you just have to attach the gravity field to the car body after you setup the car wheel/physics scripts user added image

Israel "Izzy" Long
Motion and Title Design for Broadcast-Film-DS
izzylong.com

Quote

# 3 02-03-2004 , 06:29 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Jul 2002

Location: Stuttgart, Germany

Posts: 16

Thanks a lot ... can you give me a hint where to find such a script? I'm not very good with MEL yet ... well actually I'm not very good at maya at all yet ... but I still got the hope that will change

Quote

# 4 02-03-2004 , 07:39 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Jul 2003

Posts: 1,257

ragey post or PM the link to that car dynamics setup mel please

Quote

# 5 10-03-2004 , 08:50 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Jul 2002

Location: Stuttgart, Germany

Posts: 16

Hmmm ... I tried to find a script that does the trick, but didn't have any luck yet ... Maybe ragecgi could give me a hint?

Quote

# 6 11-03-2004 , 05:18 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Sep 2002

Location: Minnesota, USA

Posts: 3,709

Well, heres a start:

https://www.gignews.com/kappmarch02.htm

and

copyEXP.mel for expression-copying like for car wheel stuff:
https://www.hierographics.com/content/downloads.html

Hope any of this helped, as I too cannot find much more now...

Israel "Izzy" Long
Motion and Title Design for Broadcast-Film-DS
izzylong.com

Quote

# 7 11-03-2004 , 08:24 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Jul 2002

Location: Stuttgart, Germany

Posts: 16

Hi ragecgi,

thank you for the link. This is also very cool and I will definitly add it to my favorites to use it whenever I will make a vehicle, but I think there was a misunderstanding. Probably because I'm not a native english speaker, so here is my second attempt.

What I want to do is create something that is animated and then let physics (gravity and friction) figure out what the whole thing does. I don't want to let a path define the direction of the thing and have a script animate the wheels accordingly, but the other way around. I want the wheels to turn and gravity and friction animate the vehicle. ... Uh ... I don't know if that is much clearer than my original post ... But I really hope so ...

Quote

# 8 12-03-2004 , 04:28 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Sep 2002

Location: Minnesota, USA

Posts: 3,709

I understand now user added image

Not sure if Maya can do this without some heavy scripting.
(not sure, I've never tried)

Max has something like this built-in (only recently), but I think there might be a person here who MIGHT be able to help you.

His name is Brian Ellebracht, and he is a moderator for our Modeling sections.

He has done animations like this in the past, but I'm not sure if he used straight-up dynamics, or if he keyframed it all, so feel free to ask him user added image

Also ask Danny Ngan in our Melscript forum about any scripts he might know of user added image

Sorry I couldn't be of more help user added image

Israel "Izzy" Long
Motion and Title Design for Broadcast-Film-DS
izzylong.com

Quote

# 9 12-03-2004 , 10:27 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Jul 2002

Location: Stuttgart, Germany

Posts: 16

Hi Rage!

You definitely helped a lot. I will try and ask them, if they know of anything else. Otherwise I gues I will have to write it in plain C++ which will be some hard coding. Thank you anyway for your time!

Quote

Dynamic rigid bodies

Posting Rules Forum Rules

Similar Threads

Topics

Free Courses

Full Courses

VFX News