Reactor: Releasing Object from Rope

[Dave Black]

Yeah, that's a hard one.

Though I've never tried to do this, I'd start this way:

You have the vertex of a spline attached to a sphere, or a vert of a sphere attached to a spline via a modifier.

Instead of doing a direct connection, perhaps using a dummy would work, as you could set the dummy's "link controller" to animate between 2 different bodies.

So, I'd see it like this:

Spline --> Dummy(with link control) --> Sphere

So the "Rigid body" that you'd choose in the "attachtoRB" mod, would have the dummy picked instead of the sphere. Now, when I say, "dummy", it could be a non renderable box or something as well. Just something there to control the linking of the two bodies.

So if you wanted to make the sphere release from the spline at a certain frame, this could be a workaround.

However, if you want the sphere's enertia to "snap" the connection between the 2, then you'd probably have to make a fairly sophisticated system involving breakable objects.

Again, this is all just off the top of my head, but it very well could work.

I'm actually working on a scene at work with some reactor rope, so I'll play with it a bit tomorrow.

Best of luck!

-3DZ

:D

[PokeChop]

Could you keep your reactor objects the same but when you want to let the sphere fly off the rope just clone the sphere at the keyframe it has to start it's flyoff and hide the reactor sphere and unhide the no-reactor sphere at that keyframe and let the non-reactor sphere take over the flyoff motion from there?

Of course if the reactor sphere is causing the rope to sway and bend this will probably not work quite right but maybe. I use the ole hide-unhide modified objects quite a bit and it seems to work fine so far. Just a thought...

[Dave Black]

That's really a good idea.

Reactor does have a "Velocity interpolation" feature.

Basically, an object that is linked can become part of a simlulation after it's inherited it's parent's motion. Definately a possibility.

What I theorized in my first post does'nt work. Reactor just ignores the link controller, no matter how many ways I've tried it. Ugh.

This is actually something that should be addressed. Here we have a highly sophisticated dynamics sym, and the ability to unlink objects appears missing.

I even tried animating the strength of a point to point contstraint, but to no avail...

It's almost like are buddies over at havok know this would make the system barf or something....

I'll keep trying.

-3DZ

:D

[c81]

Not a bad Idea PokeChop, but your right, the way the rope will react after the ball "leaves" it will be a bit "unphysics" like. Ill give it a go and see how it will look like.



3dZealot, that dummy link thingy didnt work dude :thumbsdow

[Dave Black]

Hey, glad you actually took the time to read my second post.

Have fun figuring it out on your own!

-3DZ

:rolleyes:

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