Problem with gravity

# 1 05-04-2004 , 07:59 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Apr 2004

Posts: 2

**I'm wretchedly new to Maya so please forgive my n00bness**

I have 12 letters: "Clean Records" imported from Illustrator and extruded using Bevel Plus. Each is being affected by a single gravity field and all are active rigid bodies. At frame one they are some ways above a flat plane which is not affected by gravity but is a passive body. Most of the letters fall onto the plane and slightly bounce until resting and that's exactly what I want. However, the "a" in Clean just plops and doesn't move. And the "e" in Clean does this: the bottom bounces up so the that it's rotated about 45 degrees along the x axis and 30 degrees along the z axis and the letter sticks there and doesn't come down.

As I said before, I'm a rank beginner so I haven't added any extra attributes to anything and just taken the defaults for any process used to get what I've described above with the exception of not extruding end caps. All the letters are perfectly flat on the bottom.

Any ideas anyone might have as to how to get the "a" and "e" to behave like the others would be greatly appreciated.

nautonnier

Last edited by nautonnier; 05-04-2004 at 11:30 PM.

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# 2 05-04-2004 , 09:14 PM

The Maya Mountain
Join Date: Aug 2002

Location: Seattle, WA

Posts: 8,245

check their normals compared to the rest of the letters.

Display > Polygon components > Normals

-Mike
The Maya Toolbelt

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# 3 05-04-2004 , 11:18 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Apr 2004

Posts: 2

I'm assuming I'm looking for anything that's sticking out below the bottom?

If I display the long normals, the ones on the "a" are a little bit shorter than the others and the ones on the "e" are a little bit longer.

At this point, how did the variations occur? How do I fix them? And what are normals to begin with?

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# 4 06-04-2004 , 06:14 AM

The Maya Mountain
Join Date: Aug 2002

Location: Seattle, WA

Posts: 8,245

A "normal" is a surface direction. In order for certain functions to work, such as collisions, the normal needs to be facing outward.

You've got the Edit Poly > Normals > menu to do a number of things, including "Reverse."

-Mike
The Maya Toolbelt

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Problem with gravity

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