3D Forum - the 3D Computer Graphics Message Board

Site Admin Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 899

When it is more appropriate to use dynamic simulations instead of keyframe animations?

What ways there are to make the dynamic simulations more controllable?

What is the best way to combine keyframe animations with dynamic simulations?
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Andyba, 3d artist
skills: 3d modeling, texturing, rendering, 3d character animation, compositing
3d software experience: 3ds max, Maya, Softimage XSI, Deep Paint 3d, Body Paint 3D, Wings 3D, Z Brush
2d software experience: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After effects, Macromedia Flash, Freehand

3D Graphics Starter Joined: 01 Aug 2009 Posts: 3

i'm asking myself these questions now, with a school project.

i'm trying to animate a car crashing through a fruitstand, and dynamics sofar seems terribly processor hungry. just to bang out a playblast takes forever.

i do have a lot of objects to be moving however, something like 50 objects to go flying. all quite low poly. i'm a bit confused as to why it takes maya so long to calculate these collisions, when game engines can do the same (albeit simpler) at will.

any suggestions?

Site Admin Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 899

I think that game engines use approximate geometries like bounding boxes or bounding spheres. While Maya tries to calculate the actual shapes.

Also some game engines may use the GPU for dynamics calculations, though I am not sure about this.

What do you mean when you say "quite low poly"? I would create really low poly objects and constrain the high poly objects to them so they follow the motion but do not take part in the dynamics calculation.
_________________
Andyba, 3d artist
skills: 3d modeling, texturing, rendering, 3d character animation, compositing
3d software experience: 3ds max, Maya, Softimage XSI, Deep Paint 3d, Body Paint 3D, Wings 3D, Z Brush
2d software experience: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After effects, Macromedia Flash, Freehand

3D Graphics Starter Joined: 01 Aug 2009 Posts: 3

Andyba wrote:

What do you mean when you say "quite low poly"? I would create really low poly objects and constrain the high poly objects to them so they follow the motion but do not take part in the dynamics calculation.

i have 3 boxes. the boxes are split into 6 pieces. each piece is a cube, so like 72 polys for the boxes. and the fruit pieces have roughly 20 or so polys.

how it is is, the boxes are broken up into pieces like a jigsaw puzzle to simulate splitting, and the fruit is sitting on the boxes. more fruit is inside the boxes.

the three boxes with fruit are close to each other, and i'm thinking the source of my slowdown isn't the number of polys i'm using so much, as the amount of collisions that are present between all the pieces. interesting in your solution of constraining high polys to low polys to simulate the effect. i will give that a try with the fruit and see if that helps me out any. what i really wish is that maya had a way to tune down the physics, as you can tune down render quality. would be great if you could get a "preview" physics run on objects. mayb there is one and i don't know about it.

Site Admin Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 899

What fruits do you have? I don't remember in Maya but in 3ds max dynamics there is an option to substitute spherical 3d models with a mathematical sphere so it will not consider all the polygons but will use a perfect sphere formula for calculation which should make it faster. May be Maya has something similar.
If you can post a screen shot of what you are doing it could clear things up for many readers.
_________________
Andyba, 3d artist
skills: 3d modeling, texturing, rendering, 3d character animation, compositing
3d software experience: 3ds max, Maya, Softimage XSI, Deep Paint 3d, Body Paint 3D, Wings 3D, Z Brush
2d software experience: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After effects, Macromedia Flash, Freehand

3D Graphics Starter Joined: 01 Aug 2009 Posts: 3

i have some screenshots i can upload. but the anti spam filter doesn't trust me yet.

i don't know if i can wait for 12 more dates. Ms. Spam is quite the prude!

Site Admin Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 899

Vultur, I think you can upload images to 3dmd servers. What you can't do yet is point to other images. i.e. use links.

Just use the Go Advanced button after you have entered the text in the fast reply form.

Please let me know if you have some problems.
_________________
Andyba, 3d artist
skills: 3d modeling, texturing, rendering, 3d character animation, compositing
3d software experience: 3ds max, Maya, Softimage XSI, Deep Paint 3d, Body Paint 3D, Wings 3D, Z Brush
2d software experience: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After effects, Macromedia Flash, Freehand

Vultur	Posted: October 13, 2009 Post subject:
3D Graphics Starter Joined: 01 Aug 2009 Posts: 3 Back to top	i have some screenshots i can upload. but the anti spam filter doesn't trust me yet. i don't know if i can wait for 12 more dates. Ms. Spam is quite the prude!

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3D Forum - the 3D Computer Graphics Message Board

Keyframe animations vs dynamic simulations

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