Reactor Help: Simulating a Chain

[BrandonD]

I originally used a real brute force method of doing an chain by simulating each link. In the end that was too time consumer and just plain dumb. A better technique I came up with was to use a Reactor rope to create the motion and then snap links onto the spline via Path Constraints (with no animation). It was a bit tedious to setup and in the end I wrote a simple script to make it easier to create the links, but trust me, it's a much faster and easier way to do chain simulation (you can see it in "Final Destination2").

[Dave Black]

Way to think out of the box, Brandon. That's a great way to go. It does sound crazy to do that on short lengths of chain, but I can see it really coming in handy with longer ones.

Thanks for the tip, man.

And for the original question:

Make your chain links, add them into a rigid body collector dummy, open reactor in the utilities panel, make sure all the links have mass, make the top one unyielding, set them all to concave, and run the sim.

-3DZ

:D

[digital NUT]

Thanks for the help, but how do I set them to concave? I see options for concave but no "make it concave" button. In-depth help please?

[Dave Black]

Select the object, then set it to "use mesh", or "Use proxy mesh". Proxy mesh allows you to create a custom hull.

-3DZ

D:

[digital NUT]

Ok cool, I did what you told me to (add mass, proxy mesh, simulate) but when I watch the animation....:hmm: the ring flies out in a wierd direction instead of hanging onto the unyeilding ring. Also, the unyeilding ring doesn't stop the flying ring either. I set it up so that the flying ring would land perfectly, but it's not working!:hmm:

[Dave Black]

You should consult both the included documentation, as well as the example(chain) scenes provided with the software, as your questions unfortuantly go beyond what can be explained here.

-3DZ

:D

[digital NUT]

soory! Thanks alot for the help anyway.:thumbsup:

[digital NUT]

OKAY! I went into the tutorials, found the chains, and....THERE WE GO!!!:scream: :applause:

Thanks man! May (ermm...) God / Yahweh / *insert name* have praise to your soul!

Check it out, just started this scene. WIP...

http://damnednut.8k.com/images/chainedtohell2.jpg

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