FXWars! Catapult! (Trebuchet) : Projectkmo

#1

EDIT Sunday 8-8-04

**** Movie Links added…as well as some more images. Thanks to Alx for hosting them for me **** http://www.alxstudios.com/personal/treb/KMO/ lots of test renders/playblasts etc…I have over 2 gigs of Blooper videos from weird dynamic results.***

Well, here it is so far…now the hard part…figureing out the Dynamics in Maya…I’ve not used them since Maya 1.5 …OUCH!! or was it Maya 2.0? I forget…I just remember they got Overhauled from the Version I WAS using and it messed me all up LOL. More to come soon!

#2

Thanks to Gaggle allowing us all to download his scene and pick it apart, I was able to reverse engineer much of what was stumping me…this is as far as I’ve gotten so far. I’d love to do more tonight but I gotta go bounce some drunk Marines for a bit. Playblast below…OK, nm…I cant upload a movie…guess I’ll have to find a host and up a link later…oh well.

Thanks again Gaggle!

John

#3

Hope this link works…

http://us.f2.yahoofs.com/bc/40fc0d2d_179f/bc/videos/Treb_Movie_02.avi?bftLB_ABxoPAG.AN

I needs some tweaking for sure…as it is, it seems the weight of the projectile helps to bring the arm on around. I’ll be tweaking the various options on the rope, projectile, arm, counter weight etc today to get a more fluid/correct looking animation. I may need to update the model a bit too, IE increase the height so I can put the counter weight farther out infront etc.

Thanks for looking, this has been fin so far…figuring it all out etc.

OH and if anyone can recomend a better place to store playblast files online so I can link them here…please tell = )

John

#4

I think I got it smoothed out now…though I’m using a Keyed Pin to let the projectile go…has it been decided yet if thats ok?

Links removed becasue they didnt work

#5

Your video links are messed up, they’ve got some text added at the back of them. But when I remove the text I get a “You do not have permission to get the requested URL from this server.” …

Good free and cheap web hosting solutions can be found in the web hosting thread (sticky) in the WIP forums.
I you have a few dollars to spend each month you might want to check out LunarPages or midPhase. I heard some good things about them.

  • Rens
#6

Ok, i’ve bailed on the free or cheap web space…I tried for a day but gave up…

I posted in the Maya/Dynamics forum but thought I’d toss my latest issue in here too with a picture updat incase anyone reads this and might have a thought or two. Here is my current issue

"I am trying to wind/reel a rope up on a shaft dynamicaly… this is what I’ve tried

I used a Poly cylinder as a passive rigid body (for the rope to be wound up on) I animated it rotating, I then used a dumy object to rotate at the same rate but along the outside of the shaft…this Dummy oblect is what I PIN’d my first Rope peice to ( I used 10 cylinders to represent a basic rope) all the rope cylinders were Active Rigid Bodies all Pined together and finally Pined to the hidden dummy object giving the illusion that it was tied to the animated shaft as it reeled in the rope…it works great for a few frames but then the Rope (Cylinders) Fall through the Shaft…even if I make the shaft Active too…it still ends up working right for a few frames it winds nicely then it all fals through the shaft…"

and an update image

thanks!

#7

well, after a bit of work, I think I got the wound rope thing sorta licked…
The changing of collision layers didnt help on my original test…though it may have helped in my later attempts as I changed the physical set up a bit. I still dont know if this is the ideal way to go…but it seems to work…for now. I was going to use a set up like this to wind the rope/pull the Trebuchet’s arm back down to a cocked position.

#8

OK so I’m posting this here and in the dynamics forum as well so others can read this info if they don’t come here:

the problem I forsee with this method for you is that those stand-in cylinders are going to keep bouncing around as they collide with the big cylinder and probably going to keep jittering and not come to rest like you want them to. Not having done this myself or seen footage I can’t guarantee this but I very much suspect it will be so. Not only that, but a dynamic solution for winding the rope may not be your absolute best bet. There is likely a way to roll up the rope using expressions. I just got the “spiral_curve” script from highend3d last night and played with it just a little bit. Going to be using this to create all my static wound up ropes. I know in principle how that script works but I wasn’t sure how to implement the code in Maya, so I’ll be dissecting it and seeing if I can come up with something a little more complicated that can unroll the curve as well. If I get this working, I will post the results sometime this weekend. In the meantime, your method will probably work, or rather, IS working but the jitter may be a problem. I think you could perhaps solve this problem by putting the damping way up as well. I’ll look into it! Peace and good luck.

#9

Well, I’ve got a dynamic pin now that holds the treb from firing…and when the pin is pulled it goes off…though I’m still fighting with finding a good rope formula…I may give up on that for now. Modeled a tad more…nothing major…messing a bit with textures and rendering now.

#10

Ok, I’m working on texturing now…again, something I’m having to learn…so its all very basic.
I’ve also got myself into a mess now…I watched Return of the King today…and now I’ve gone and started making a Seige Tower to be my Trebs Target…though if I do the impact dynamicaly…it would be a seperate render and a seperate cut…we’ll have to see.

#11

Ahh, siege tower, nice. Should be cool if you pull it off right! Looks great.

#12

Working on the Smashing of my Seige Towers Gate and Upper Floor by my Trebs Projectile
Sadly I still cant upload any video…still no place to host it…so I just tossed a few images together…I hope you all will get the idea here

Ok, after fighting with the “Shatter” command, I gave up…and just made my own broken up geometry and hid it till the last second…thought it has a ways to go, this was just a test to see if I could do it…and if my computer could take it…lol. Still a long ways to go.

Thanks for looking!

Oh, PS this is with no gravity on the gate yet…

#13

cool stuff on your desturction…
and i like yur catapult… i think we used a look a like treb ref :stuck_out_tongue:

looking nice so far :slight_smile:

#14

I’ve resigned myself to the fact that my Final entry will most likely be more of an Animatic than a final render…due to time and what not. Alx has been kind enough to offer up some space for me and host a few videos which I’ll work on posting in a bit. For now I’ll just post a little shot of my Seige Tower which will get smashed by my Trebs projectile…again, all dynamic. I’ve had fun smashing it over and over and over…

#15

Posted a Link above in the 1st Post that will now have Movies and images of my progress…thanks again to ALX for hosting them for me. Any and all feed back is greatly appreciated! Lucky we still have a few days left…I’m gonna need them.

thanks again foir looking!

John

#16

Just messing with the Castle that the Treb will be launching from…at the Seige Tower

#17

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