Beer glass scene creation
This course contains a little bit of everything with modeling, UVing, texturing and dynamics in Maya, as well as compositing multilayered EXR's in Photoshop.
# 1 22-03-2005 , 01:45 PM
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Are my models too complex for dynamics?

Got another problem once again. user added image

I'm modelling a set of block with letters on them for a flash movie. So instead of using texturing I modelled the letters directly on the blocks. Basically i have been using Boolean -> Difference to create a hole in every side of a block to perfectly fit the letter inside. This means (hopefully9 that the cubes (or blocks) are smooth along the surface. I have then used Combine to creat a single entity for each block and made them Active Rigid Bodies. The floor is of course a Passive Rigid Body and then a Gravity Field.

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As you can see on the screenshots, all blocks have been stacked using the Align function, so they are all perfectly placed onto each other. The problem comes when Maya will start to calculate the way the blocks affect each other. To put it simply, Maya hangs after playing two frames.

The whole idea for this scene is that a ball will roll by, hitting some of the blocks and tipping them over. Now, I'm starting to wonder if the meshes are too complex for Maya to work with and if there is something I can do to make it work.

I'll link to the .mb-file as well if someone would be kind enough to take a look at the project.

https://tristan.rsn.bth.se/files/maya...nimation_02.mb


//frippz
# 2 22-03-2005 , 03:36 PM
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if im not mistaking, a better way would be to use lattices on theose cubes and make those latitices active bodies,
i dont know what maya version you are using, and im not 100% sure, as i have only tried this once.
so the lattice would have probably need to be just 2 2 2 settings in terms of how much subdivisions they have and they would increase performance quite a bit.
you can even turn off your poly cubes while you are calculating the dynamics and turn them on when you are ready to render.

# 3 22-03-2005 , 03:38 PM
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I'm using Maya 6.0. Lattices huh? Sound like a damn fine idea and my heart filled with joy once you I read it!

I will give it a try! Thanks! user added image


//frippz
# 4 22-03-2005 , 03:49 PM
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I would try seperating the blocks by a small amount (float each above the one below it) then let them settle naturally during the first few frames of the simulation. I'm just guessing that maybe there is some inter-penetration between the blocks or the particles assigned to each block's vertices.

# 5 23-03-2005 , 02:59 AM
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all thoughs faces can also be giving you problems if it still dosn't work for you. You might try just making a cube. The UV's are already layed out for you. and just do a little textureing in photoshop. the poly cube's would def do dynamic's much better.

# 6 23-03-2005 , 03:25 AM
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Isn't there a way to run the dynamics on low res geometry then bake the animation to a high res version? I think I read this somewhere, but I haven't tried it myself.

That said, you're scene isn't that complex and the geometry is too heavy, so I would think you should be able to do this.



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# 7 23-03-2005 , 09:19 AM
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Isn't there a way to run the dynamics on low res geometry then bake the animation to a high res version? I think I read this somewhere, but I haven't tried it myself.

That said, you're scene isn't that complex and the geometry is too heavy, so I would think you should be able to do this.

yes and by god you should be doing it!!! user added image there's no point trying to run the sim on those blocks it will take forever and it's completley unecessary. I would do the lettering in textures as was suggested but if you want it as geo then ok.

the easiest way to try is to go to the drawing overides in the attribute editor of the object and enable the overides and turn level of detail to "bounding box". That might speed things up.

A quick way to do it is to create a poly cube that is the same dimensions as your cube. Then get it in the same position as your cube (you can do a point and orientate constrain and then delete them). With the simple cube in place simply constrain the complex cube to the simple one with a parent constrain (or a point and orientate constrain). Then you make the simple cubes the rigid bodies and hey presto very quick rigid bodies. All you're doing is providing a proxy object so that the collision calcs are quicker and simpler.

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# 8 23-03-2005 , 08:44 PM
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Thank you for all your replies in this matter. user added image

The reason that I chose to use geo for the letters is that I will be rendering these blocks in Maya Vector for a Flash animation. I wasn't really sure how to make texures work in Vector, so I went for the geo option.

Will report back on my attempts. user added image


//frippz
# 9 07-04-2005 , 05:28 PM
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Ok, I'm doing the contrain parent attempt right now and it seems to be working. user added image

I'll let you all know how it ends. user added image


//frippz
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