If anyone can help me animate this, I'll love you forever
by Kirk Smith
on
Sep 18, 2008 at 10:16:16 am
Like the title says, I want to animate this, with full dynamics and collision...the works. This took me the better part of a few hours to figure everything out. The frame is made from a spline, the points of which I had to place manually so the curves would be right. The strings are splines with Spline Dynamics hair tags applied, and the balls are attached using XPresso, they move with the string (you'd think it'd be the other way around, but I couldn't make it work). What I want to be able to do is have the starting ball fall, thus making the other end ball go up. This is basic physics, it's kinetic energy transferring through the balls til it can't anymore, making the end ball go up. Am I right in assuming that it would be as simple as just applying rigib body dynamics to each ball, setting collisions, and letting it go? That seems to simple, I just know that there will be XPresso involved. Anyways, can someone point me in the right direction please, I really would like to actually finish this one project.
Re: If anyone can help me animate this, I'll love you forever by Kirk Smith on Sep 19, 2008 at 9:24:47 am
Bump, sorry for the double post, but I'd really like to try getting this to work without borking it up trying rigid body dynamics and having it not work. I'd rather start with a good knowledge of what I'll need to do, then figure it out from there, then try to blindly throw it together. I'm sure I did this completely wrong, it seems like I have a LOT of objects in the OM. I have a group with 5 sweep nurbs with a .25m radius circle along the splines to make the strings. I have the 5 balls in a group, I have the frame for the thing, the floor, the 2 lights (they weren't on in the picture in the first post), the targets for those lights, and the null object where I put all the XPresso for the "strings". It seems like too much.
Anyways, I'd love to animate this nd make it dynamic, swinging back and forth, but I just don't know how, please help, someone.
Re: If anyone can help me animate this, I'll love you forever by Brian Jones on Sep 20, 2008 at 2:25:22 am
This is sort of right. It's a fake of the physics using the y position of a null following a circle spline mapped to the rotation of the end swings.
It does not decay but that could be done by reducing the diameter of the circle spline over time or by substituting the circle for a helix spline that reduces diameter from start to end.
Re: If anyone can help me animate this, I'll love you forever by Kirk Smith on Sep 21, 2008 at 12:20:31 am
Could I not just use the real physics in the Rigid Body Dynamics? Would that work? I don't know if C4D is advanced enough to transfer the energy like a real Newton's Cradle works, though. If it does, then I could potentially do this, right? Will something move something else that it hits? Like if I had a ball laying on the ground, and I dropped another ball on top of it, would the ball on the ground move?
