CGTalk - Quesion about using Reactor & Character Studio in the same scene.

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Sinistar83

05-15-2002, 08:05 AM

Hello everyone, I have just started messing around with the Reactor plugin in Max 4, and it seems pretty powerful from what I messed with it so far.
Anyways, I was just wondering how well it works with Character studio and if there are any major issues with it? Like lets say if I want to do a little animation where I have a biped walking around minding his own business, and then all of a sudden he gets hit by a car or something. Could I have reactor figure out the dynamics for the biped getting hit by the car and have it realistically re-create the biped getting hit by the car and hitting the ground?

Also are there any good reactor tutorials online at all?

Thanks in advance

Dave Black

05-20-2002, 04:45 AM

First off, you are right, reactor is an amazing plugin. It is, however, not that amazing.

A character studio biped is a custom IK rig. And reactor does not take IK into consideration when it runs a sim.

You could probably use bones...This is all theoretical, as I don't want to spend the time trying this, but...

Make bones out of boxes, and skin your mesh to them. Do not link them together, as IK cannot be dynamically simulated with any MAX plugin...yet.

Bind the bones together with reactor contraints, and then run the sim.

What this would look like is your character losing all his locomotion and becoming like a rag doll. It would take alot of work, but I think you could use this tecnique to knock a character around with a car.

I guess to answer you question, no, character studio will not work that way with reactor, but there are ways around it.

The other functions work really well, though, such as clothsims, and such, as they are not being run on the biped skeleton, but instead on the mesh.

whew...Hope that made sense.

Sinistar83

05-28-2002, 06:14 AM

Thanks for the reply. Yeah I've sen that Ragdoll demo on the Havok site, and it's pretty cool, I even downloaded the source on there but I haven't gotten into exploring all the intacacies of reactor yet. Too bad it won't work well with IK stuff yet.. Maybe in future releases? :)

Sinistar83

06-12-2003, 06:20 AM

Now that Max 5.1 and Character Studio 4.0 is out, does anyone know if CS is now more/better integrated with Reactor 1.5?

Or is it still pretty limited like the older version?

Thanks in advance.

mouj

06-12-2003, 02:52 PM

Howdy !

Character Dynamics is included in Havok's next release :

Character Dynamics
The Havok Game Dynamics SDK includes a Character Kit that allows you to easily insert physical characters into your game. Humans and monsters can now react naturally in physical environments, saving you from having to animate multiple different reactions.

You can check Havok's (http://www.havok.com) website for a (shockwave) demo of it - i would take a wild guess and say that it will be included in a future 'Reactor 2' release, well i do hope so anyway !

So the answer is 'not yet', as it does not depend on Character Studio but really on Reactor i think.

mouj

Sinistar83

06-12-2003, 05:46 PM

Yeah, mouj but hmm... I wonder if Reactor 2 will be a separate purchase, or will it be included with 3Ds Max 6 *crosses fingers*?

:)

Also, look at this Q&A, though... Question #5.
http://www.discreet.com/docs/products/reactor/reactorQAFinal_31901.doc
Too bad it doesn't mention what version of Reactor. :(

In the meantime, are there any other physics plug-ins for 3ds Max that work with CS, or is reactor the only Physics plug-in?

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