Particle/Dynamics simulation Questions

[BrandonD]

Yeah, a major pain eh? You can as you said, use PArray to fragment geometry and have it be affected by gravity and collision. But unfortunately with instanced geometry (and fragments) the pivot point is tested for collision, not the geometry (this is a common error...argh). Also PArray doesn't have good rotation controls. The way I did it in the past was to use PStudio's "Spin Speed Dependancy" to cause particles to stop rotating when they come to a halt. This still doesn't address the collision and emitter issue. So actually running a dynamics simulation is the only real way to do proper collision detection, but that's not such a flexible way to do this kind of effect.

The only tool in MAX that's currently available that can do it all I think is Thinking Particles. It's much like Houdini's POPs and can handle fragmentation, collision and perParticle emission.

Maybe in the near future there will be other options.

[ErickG]

Ouch!!! I thought this was the case but was hoping that I had overlooked something. I was playing around with reactor but this was not giving me much joy. On a fragmented object, when assembled, the faces touch each other. Reactor did not like this very much. I had to separate them out by hand and this was a major pain.

I created the object fragments using parray, made a mesher compound, converted this to a poly object and separated out each of the chunks into individual objects. This was a major convoluted way to go.

Thinking particles… I check that out. I have Particle studio but have not gotten too far into it yet. I do like the control it has. POPs are great. I played around with them back in the days when Houdini was called Prisms. Cool stuff.

I’ll play around and see what I can come up with in the meantime. Thanks for the feedback. It was most helpful.

-Erick

[gundog]

Fragile
by Run4FX Category: Object Download: R2, R3, R4 Added on: [3/21/02]
Fragile is a dynamic plugin which is used to break an object into fragments with real-time face collision and which also gives you control over the spinning of the fragments. It also dampens the spinning of the fragments. You can add the air resistance forces along with desired gravity to create different effects. All other built-in forces available in 3dsmax like wind can also be used on the object.

from http://max3d.3dluvr.com/pluginsarchives.php

[gaggle]

Heya, a comment/question thing to this:

I thought a particle by definition was a single point in ZYX, and thus unable to be tested for collision in any other way than its pivot, or a radius around its pivot..
But this is not the case? You can do per-face collision-detection and whatnot and it's still particles? I thought that doing actual collision-detection meant it'd be meshes doing a dynamics-simulation.. If PArray could do the whole collision-thing like ErickG wants, what would it be doing differently than, say, what Reactor offers?

I'm completly not saying the answers suggested and explained here is wrong or anything, I'm simply curious as to whats what. Is it just a tiny defintion detail that I'm hung up on? I don't conciously try to be a nitpicker.. :) (although I also claim there's technically nothing called "Set Driven keys" in Maya, only "Driven keys", so maybe it's a personality-trait :))

My answer to ErickG would've been something to the effect of "tough luck, by defintion you can't do that to particles, at most you can use TP or the likes to make each particle have a collision-radius". But since it doesn't seem to be that simple an answer perhaps someone could offer some insight?

[BrandonD]

Actually what I said is that PArray CAN'T do what he wants because it's particle based. Thinking Particles is the only MAX particle system that I know of that might be able to do it (through some clever trickery).

[gaggle]

.. :blush:
oh.. oh yeah.
I must've been blind there whilest reading your answer BrandonD, sorry if my post seemed to attack a non-existent "issue", and then pretty much reiterate what you explained in the first place.

[ErickG]

Reactor might work if I break up the elements by hand or use parray to do the breakup, make a mesher object and convert to poly object. Lots of work for such a simple explosion.

I remember back in the good old day where you could do this using power animator with a simple set-up. The only drawbacks were that you needed a 40,000 box with another 40,000 solftware charge ontop of that!!!!

I guess we have some more work to do on the max particles. There are some great things that it will do but a tighter integration to dynamics in this case sould go on the fix-it list.

Checking out thinking particles. Looks very cool. A lot like POPs.

-Erick

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