Rigid Bodies - Interpenetration while keyframing

#1

Hi,

I’m still relatively young in my Maya journey. I have a scene where I have a modeled bug inside a modeled glass bottle, and I’m trying to place the bug so that it’s pressed up against the glass on the inside of the bottle looking out.

From what I understand, if you have rigid bodies in Maya and are using forces to animate them, they’ll act like rigid bodies (example, bowling pins getting knocked down by a bowling ball). What I’m wondering is … is it possible to have two rigid bodies, and when you’re translating them in the viewport to set keyframes, to not have them interpenetrate? In other words, is there a way - without any dynamic forces, just when I am setting up positions by hand - that I can move that bug’s hand or body all the way to where it touches the glass bottle, and then it stops … so I can have the hand/body pressed up against the bottle?

Any thoughts/suggestions/pointers on how you would approach this would be greatly appreciated. Just looking for a pointer in the right direction.

Thanks.

#2

Read about the hidden Membrane node in Maya… its not perfect as it was never finished, but just might work.

#3

This looks very useful, at a quick look. Thanks for taking the time to reply and for the info. I’ll post back once I’ve had a chance to play with it.

#4

I can see that there would be a place for that membrane node (saw an example on youtube where the membrane node was used for the vest that a character is wearing), but it’s not working in my case. My character has joints and has been skinned, and if I apply the membrane node to it, it messes up the joint/skinning and the skinning comes off the joints (kind of like double transformations … and I’m guessing that is what is happening).

Any other thoughts/approaches/solutions would be appreciated.

#5

I think your best option is to go with deformer(s) on this one. You need to read the docs about the deformation order and how you can modify it. That way you can build a rig that’s easy to animate yet directable enough to achieve the needed behaviour.

/risto