FXWars! Roller Coaster!: colt

#1

EDIT: MY FINAL ENTRY

Here we go:

Coaster Hellride. (very strongly inspired by Indy :slight_smile: )

Edited and rendered with all the bells and whistles: (Quicktime, 19 Mbyte)

Coaster Final

A plain shaded animation: (Quicktime, 11 Mbyte)

Coaster plain

See second page for details.

That topic got me interested and so I played the afternoon with maya and it’s dynamics.

Somehow it seems, that creating the track will be much harder, than getting the wagons to roll. Example needed?

Wrong curvature

We should create a video of the best rc-crashes at the end. :stuck_out_tongue:

#2

hehehe pretty cool. Have you thought about putting retaining wheels on the cars to help keep them on the track. They’d be just like the real ones. See about the middle of the page for a pipc:

http://www.bellingham.fi/huvipuis/ukliquid.htm

#3

Well, I had the idea of a jump or two in my ride … and that won’t work with those retaining wheels. Another trick would be to put the center of mass between the tracks, that elimates nearly all sideward force, but I think that’s cheating … sort of. :argh:

But at the moment I’m stuck with another problem:

crash

Somehow the collision simulation produces sometimes an error when the “wheels” slide over an mesh edge. It seems to happen without any reason, I just can’t find a cure for it.
Anybody encoutered that problem before? Something sliding over a mesh, and at an edge it suddly jumps up, as if stumbles over the edge. It even occours on completely straight geometry.

#4

eh, you car is sliding so good, mine in reactor doesn’t slide :smiley:

i encountred problems with crashing like that, try to make more substeps, in max’s reactor you can

#5

start good, your spring set up seems really promising.

#6

I love the crash, perfect camera angle. Anyways, did you try banking the rails some more so theres not so much lateral forces. I hope yer putting seatbelts in… :slight_smile:

#7

Oh man, I have seen so many crashes, I’m getting sick of it. I tried everything, really everything, but mayas collide is just to unstable. It’s given me a lot of grey hairs these last two days.

At the moment I’m trying a different approch, through scripting. Much like Lalunevertes.

#8

Don’t get disheartened, You should try and use Lightwaves HardFX, you’d be completely grey after one evening !

#9

just don’t give up, i really like what you got there!

#10

Ok, I understand the first crash, its just getting thrown off to the side. But the second one makes no sence at all. Maybe the edges are catching on eachother, have you tried rounding the corners on the car? (I dont know how much it will help) You could also try boxing the rail in.
. ___________
. _ | |_ | |
. | __ | | __ |
. | |O| | | |O||
. || ||

But I think the best thing would be wheels that roll over the rail. Or does that cause problems too?

#11

Believe me, I tried everything. The funny thing is the more I tesselate the geometry, the more frequent those errors are.

Anyways, I read we don’t need to use one sinulation for the whole ride. ANd thanks to mayas stubborness I have come up with 2 different ways to simulate my rc. One stable, for long normal rides, and a freaky one for the special parts.

Now if I get to attach a second car to both sims, prepare for the ride of your life. Maybe the last one. Haven’t devided if my passengers make it alive to the end :twisted:

Here are some tests for the fun parts.

Hell_on_wheels_717kb

#12

Very cool colt! Keep going with that. You always draw bigger crowds when something crashes or looks like it might.

#13

Interesting (cool) idea but impossible to make (safely) in real life. The weight of passengers (or lack thereof), plus the weather (wind and stuff) would make it impossible to grant the safety of the passengers (the jumps). Butit’s perfect for the guys that don’t feel like going to hell for suicide, and would also like your family to get millions from the lawsuit.

Groovy.

#14

Hi,

Looks really good so far. How do you get your car to slide so good in maya? I have zero static and dynamic friction, but still does not slide as smoothly as yours. I also was thinking of using retaining wheels on the side to keep it on track, seems like it would work.

Cool crash too :slight_smile:

Oh yeah, what do the bones do? I see them on your car and wasn’t sure.

#15

Wow! Really nice sim there. Reminds me of the good ol’ Indiana Jones, Temple of Doom days. For coolness factor, I would keep the “risky” parts in. I’m really impressed that you got the cart to jump off AND land and keep it going.

Keep up the great work!

peace,

Lu

#16

Can You explain how achieved this camera setup?
This what we see in plablast.

Greetz

#17

Thanks for your comments guys. It’s a bit busy here these days, but I hope to squeeze in some FX-time now and then.

alvinkanarbik: I’m not going for a realistic approach. Realistic in terms of doable or save in real life. That gives me so much more freedom when designing the track. And I think it’s more fun to look at.

alexgk: I use no damping and friction and it slides just fine. No special tricks there. Don’t use too much geometry for the simulation, only whats absolutely neccessary. It’ll speed up things and make them more predictable. Delete every unneccessary face, you can even let only edges collide. So don’t build wheels, but just a face or edge in their place and add the wheel later, just for rendering.
Mhh, no bones there. Maybe you mean the springs I use?

Baq: Some are constrained to the car, and the “cool” ones just use a low focal length.

#18

lol I like the part of the jumping car!

Maybe you do something fancy with this! What about a spin so the waggon turns around 360 degree and lands on the track again? :buttrock:

André

#19

Ah, damping…I’ll play with those settings and see if it helps. Thanks. Also after reading other posts I realized those were springs you were using. Looks great, can’t wait to see the finished result!

#20

Some are constrained to the car, and the “cool” ones just use a low focal length.

Yeah, I understand this part :slight_smile: but I wanna know somethin’ else. This movie: fun.mov is playblast right? So, how You made camera change from one view to other, or maybe there are few plyblast composited???

I ask coz I wanna make somethin’ similar and don’t know how. I wanna make camera change from one to other through the animation.

Greetz