Modeling: Sandbag Wall question

[thorn3d]

Does it have to be constructed as one object?

If not, i'd make 10-20 individual bags and stack them.

thorn

[TimWoods]

for stacking things these days i use softbodys in reactor. Make several bags, attach the soft body modifyer, use a soft body collector, then react away, makes them squash and mold together. but the simpler way is to just stack them. more realistic sugin reactor tho.
:shrug:

[Aldaryn]

Yep, stacking sandbas into a cute pile would be the most suitable way to do this, unless you need a relative quick render... :)

You've wrote, you start by creating a box, and continue with beveling, and extruding. Changing the box into editable poly is the best thing to do, if you plan, to model it in one big piece... but,

This way, the whole "pile" will always be smoothed together, because there aren't any gaps between the sandbags.
If you want to model the bags this way, some careful inseting (you've mentined you're using EditablePpoly) and extruding must be done to achieve the results you want...

I'm not asking for someone to walk me through the process as that would be wasting his/her time,

So, if you put it that way, :) .. the only adviece I can give you, is to look for "Subdivision" or "Sub-D" topics ...

Still, modelling the individual bags, and placing them on top of each other, is a good idea....

P.S.:The noise is another good mod. too. Adds some randomness, but a bit bigger scale might produce a more realistic effect....

(If you'll do it with reactor soft bodies, a good way to do it might be to modell the bags, and the outeer cloth cover of the bags separately, the cloth cover as a cloth object, and the interior as a soft body... this way some really nice folds will appear alogn the corners.... Takes some time to calculate, but can create good results...)

Good Luck!

- A.

[MadCat2k]

Thanks all for the tips. It sucks to be a newbie sometimes :( I'm going to try those two methods that were mentioned and see what I can come up with.

Update: My sandbags are turning out like rocks stacked together on the first one. I use noise to random them a bit and avoid using a Meshsmooth or anything like that. They still look like a pile of rocks :( I'll post pics soon.

Update 2: I'd like to try the Reactor Soft Body and Cloth method but I think it's a little too advanced for someone with my experience. Are there any tutorials on this? It sounds pretty complicated. Just as a test I applied the Reactor Soft Body modifier to my sandbag thing and all the options in the list were...How to put it? I had no idea how I get it working. I'm guessing this is going into animation now and I haven't even learned anything about setting up proper Keyframes or even using the Video Post. :sigh:

I guess I'm pretty much useless at everything :(

[schmoron13]

3ds max comes with a Reactor manual (hard copy)...it gives you a bunch of tutorials (which I havn't had time to try yet)...also, i believe that the second cd has the tutorials as well...hope this helps

[MadCat2k]

Thanks, I'll check them out.

[Aldaryn]

Don't be afraid to use Reactor.

It could be wise, to learn this aspect of MAX at the beginning. (However, some modelling basics are strongly required) It'll help a lot in the future, if you leran it now. :)

The manual shipped with Max is also supplied as a .pdf, so quick shearch is possible. And it's witten from the ground up: really good explanations, and walktrough on all topics. (Even some technical info....)

Keyframing, animation setup, or the usage of Video Post is not needed. - If you're using Reactor for modelling pourposes.

The only thing you'll need is a bit imagenation, to set up the starting placement of objects, and so...

Still, using Reactor is plain simple. You'll learn it fast.

Have fun with it!

- A.

[MadCat2k]

I've gone through a few tutorials on reactor so far and it doesn't seem too complicated so far. I think I got the hang of using Rigid Body but still learning a bit more about soft body. As you suggested you said if I was going to go the reactor way then make the actual bag cloth and the inside (Chicken stuffing haha) a soft body.

I think I'll give that a go now. I tried to stack them by using just soft body and they seemed to fall off of each other and land on the ground. They'd just slide off. And when I changed the mass and tweaked it a bit so it wouldn't fall off they just looked normal and didn't...How to put it? Mold together.

I'll give the cloth + soft body thing a try now but I'm not sure how I'm going to actually make the bag. Does it have to be a certain object? For example, a plane? Which would be easier to start making the bag with.

Thanks alot for te help Aldaryn.

[Aldaryn]

Hey, you're welcome.

To start modelling the sandbag itself, the most suitable way, IMO, would be to start with a box, with some initial subdivisions, (Eg. 3,3,3 , or 5,5,5) just to be eneugh to shape the pinch along the corners.

After shaping the corners, duplicate the object
(Oh, by the way, it is godd thing to apply some mapping coords. right here, so later it can fold, and bend with the object...) and apply a "Push" modifier onto it, and inflate it a bit, so it can be the base of the cloth covering.

Now, add some cuts along the side of the cloth part, and scale one of the new edges inside a bit... , to make it look like it was sawn together from two pieces....

But the modelling has to be your work, so I'll get to the Reactor setup:

...you've mentioned something about the bags sliding until they just drop to the ground. The key point you'll need to tweak a little bit is the friction. Add more friction to the bags, by adding friiction to the cloth object. This can be done through the setting of the "Reactor Cloth" modifier applyed to your bag covering... No sandbag is covered into silk... :)

Another thing to adjust might be the scale of your scane. Be sure to set the world scale, and the reactor corresponding settings. (Like gravity...) And model the objects in real world measures... This will help a lot, when setting the mass of each object... A sandbag is a heavy thing, believe me, I've had to carry some...

Good Luck!

- A.

[thorn3d]

Personal opinion - using Reactor is really overkill. It will take a LOT less time just to manually move the bags into place, and in the end i don't quite see how Reactor is going to make the scene look better.

It's a valid approach; just offering a bit more advice.

thorn

[Aldaryn]

neverwake : This modelling issue seems to be really local, and distict. IMO, using reactor won't take more time, than to get some sandbag reference, and individually shaping all the bags on top of each other.

On an averadge PC, Reactor seems to be fast, and some ways, accurate too.

But, this is my personal opinion, in many cases, using reactor is limited to low poly, just to save some time, and sanity... Later, after the calculations were done on the low poly modells, you can start building, and detailing with eg. subdiv modelling techniques...

If yoiu learn it well, and can use it as it was ment to be used, almost every technique can efficient to modell, animate etc...

Weapon of choice, I say...

- A.

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