Interparticle Collisions

[BrandonD]

Are you trying to get instanced geometry to test for collision? The problem is intanced geometry on particles, by nature, can't do this. This is because it's taking an instance of an object and applying particle transform info to it. For this reason, it sees the particle as a sort of pivot point with no size or mass. It's pretty much like this in all packages.

[shamhead]

dagnamit!

soo this isnt possible with instanced geometry...

yea, i want the instanced objects to bounce off each other.
is there another way to do it other than hand animating the collisions that will deal with a lot of geometry?

also, how do you test for collision? is this something different to what i am already doing?

cheers

[gaggle]

Thankfully you've still got some options available. As Brandon says though, it wont be with particles.

What you need is to calculate everything according to proper dynamics, and for that you can use Reactor. If you've never used it before, check out the helpfiles first, and do some simple test-runs.. it's not really all that complicated, not when you get to know it a little.

Using Reactor and its proper dynamics-calculations will be a helluva lot slower than the particle-dynamics you've already tried, so you might want to pack some patience for the trip.

This isn't something specific to MAX, as Brandon hinted at. Particles, by defintion, are points, no size. That's why they're so fast to compute, and that's why they don't know when they're colliding with the boundaries of the instanced objects. At most you'd be able to define a radius around each particle where they begin to repel eachother, but it's still nowhere near the precision of proper dynamics.

[shamhead]

oooO reactor, i thought it was a thing of extreme complexity, but after a fiddle i seem to be getting what i want.

ill give it a go


cheers for your help BrandonD and gaggle :)

[madmax1234]

Hi i also tried to do some particle collisions, but i never found out how i can get 3dsmax particles into reactor. Maybe you can tell me.

Greetz Max.

[alexgk]

Hi,
After searching I needed to resurrect this thread a bit. I have been trying to make instanced geometry collide with an object. After reading you mention about Reactor, I am trying to find out more how to do this sort of thing. Would I be making the instanced geometry a rigid body of some sort? Or the original object (used for instance reference) could be a rigid body? So far I am not having luck with the particles and reactor, but I'll keep trying.

Anyone know of a way to take all this from Max and export to Maya? :D j/k

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