“It’s a real pain to get this thing to bank right”
Yeah, welcome to the club. This is really a pain. The funny thing is when you try to spread the mountings of the main tubes along the track. The “banking” of the tubes was done with the twist curve. For the mountings you use the spline (with the pacing tool). There´s no way to get the twisting information into the spline so the mountings have to be rotated each by each. Or did I miss something?
André
laluneverte: No, I am only using one spline (and then editing the twist curve in the lofts Deformaiton properties) I don’t know how to use another spline for twisting the track. :shrug: I am using max 6, so if you have any suggestion feel free to share them.
ACantarel: lucky for me my track is solid, so I dont have to worry about the supports between the rails. I will have to make the track supports (by hand) but that shouldn’t be hard.
ACantarel: I had the same problem when trying to attach the ties. But it seemed that once I messed with the axis orientation and stuff, it actually did follow the twist using the loft. The screen that is in my topic shows those ties, I made the ties, then used the spacing tool along the original spline, and it actually did bank itself to the loft. It was strange, and I am still trying to figure out how it did that. I can get it to work on like straight hills, but I will try some banked curves in a few hours and see if I can get it work…
One question for Sir_Vuclan though, how do you plan on doing supports?
I haven’t tried it yet, but only ideas I have are to either model every support, or use splines to connect the track and footers, then loft a shape onto those splines… but I would like to hear your input…
I think I am just planning on using splines and lofting the supports or in some cases just make the spline renderable. I haven’t thought about it to much, Working on getting the track built so I can test to make sure the cars make it all the way around. Then after it all works, Ill add everything else.
Ok, new version of…almost everything.
Updated:
Cars (made them shorter to bend around track better)
added more cars
fixed track
tweaked Reactor more
http://www.uni-weimar.de/~rehberg/vulcan/CarPhysicsTest06.mov
Its getting there…
I have the coaster working around most of the track now. This clip doesnt show all of it, but you get the idea. I have a lifting device (box following a spline) to get it up the hill.
I have also started to work on the enviroment around the coaster.
Link to the newest Movie:
http://www.uni-weimar.de/~rehberg/vulcan/CarPhysicsTest07.mov
Ok, I finished my coaster. Now I just have to let it render for about a day. All the physics ended up working great. There are some things I would do differn’t if I have to to this again. But for my first FX-Wars Challenge, I think I did ok.
It may not look the best, spent very little time on the eviroment. But thats not the point, the simulation works. I would like to add more, but not enough time to work on it.:sad:
Final Specs for the coaster:
Length- 1,983’ 11" (604.722m)
Height- 112’ (from lowest point to highest point)
Time- about 1 minute from start to finish
Physics setup:
Used Max6 with Reactor 2. (and one stressed out computer)
Each train car was bound to the track by 6 wheels, Two on top, Two inside, Two on bottom. All the wheels are constrained to their car with wheel constraints. Each car was coupled to the car before it using a point constraint. The lead car uses a hinge constraint to allow it to bend around the track.
Simulation time- about 2 hours for 1550 frames, with 15 sub-steps per frame.
I am planning on rendering it 3 times.
Ill be posting pictures and movies the next few days as I get things rendered, so Check back and LEAVE A COMMENT (whats good or what needs to be fixed), so I can do better next time.
It was a lot of fun and a GREAT learning experience. (I am self-taught, about 2 years worth). Good luck to everyone else 
Looking really good!
I am very impressed! using reactor for that whole thing must have been a super pain!
Car setup (What I used with Reactor for simulation) I know the car frame is complicated, but reactor doesnt really care because it used for weight and as a parent for the wheels. I didnt use it for collisions.
Ok, here is one of the Final Movies. This one is On board the train with the enviroment. Ill post the wireframe one soon(just the coater and the track)
It took me many hours to make and many more waiting for things to calculate. I started it a few days after the competition started and worked on it a few hours a day until yesterday.
This one took 23 hours to render on my poor computer and the compression pretty much wasted the texturing. But it’s still cool to watch.
Its 640x480 and filesize is 14.8 Mb
http://www.uni-weimar.de/~rehberg/vulcan/SirVuclan-FXW-RollerCoaster-Mov01.mov
If you like seeing the wireframe part of an animation, then this one is for you. It only show the peices I used in reactor for the simulation and theres no mesh smoothing or anything like that. Its exactly what was used for calculations.
Heres the link:
http://www.uni-weimar.de/~rehberg/vulcan/Sir_Vuclan-FXW-RollerCoaster-Wire.mov
For those that are interested, I’ll post the number of polys for each piece
Each train car - - 2280 faces
Each Wheel - - 2090 faces
Total for the Track - 167264 faces
looks great, I would never have thought about using reactor for such an animation…
btw. nice to see some folks from weimar here :bounce:
Hey Vulcan, I really like your setup. As I said before it somehow “feels” right. Maybe just a little too smooth in some sections, but very convincing anyway. I’m pretty impressed that reactor can simulate collisions of so many wheels with so many polys without errors and in a “reasonable” time. (But I guess tweaking it was very time-consuming … )
You really rebuild the workings of a coaster, without simplifying or faking things. Did you also use correct weights and sizes? How do you get it up the first hill?
The interpenetration of the cars spoils the look a little, but I guess those curves are just to hard. I’d expect to see some broken necks in a real coaster in those. The ride through the waterfall is nice, but that bend afterwards is pretty sick. :argh:
Anyway, congratulations. :applause:
Hi, Thanks for the comments
ernest - Reactor worked great, I was really impress with it. I have used it before but not to this extent.
colt - Tweaking reactor wasn’t to hard once I figured out what to tweak. It handles the polys pretty well. There were too many polys for the real-time previewer, but I didnt use that a lot. The key to getting the simulation time down is setting the collision pairs. If I didnt set it up and left it at default where everything collides with everything, it would take many more hours to calculate.
ya, the cars do interpenetrate each other in a few places, but thats because I added them after I simulated the train using the frame part. Guess I’ll have to remember to think that through next time and build the cars before.
The weight of each car is about what it would be in real life.
The size is close to the real things too. The cars are a little shorter(height) then should be, it made the coaster look more streamline and faster.
You can see the two places where I pulled the coaster up hill in the wireframe movie. There are two boxes that grab a hook on the bottom of the front car and pull it up. Those boxes just follow a spline. I tried a motor and pulley system with reactor but it was giving me trouble.
The bend right before you go back into the waterfall is really tight, I was going to fix it but forgot to. The coaster barley stays on around that bend.
wooooooooooooaawwwwwwwww!! incredible work !!
so u really do that with reactor Wheel??? I m interested in your wheel settings because discreet give a poor ridiculous example and setting the Wheel is not really easy. So I never try because of the lack of references.
bravo !!
!)
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