Can you get reactor to create soft body dynamics on a Pflow particles?

#1

Hi all,

I am probably asking for a world of pain here, but i was wondering if reactor can work on particle systems?

I need to create a system of falling sheets of paper. I did a nice soft body animation last week of sheets of paper coming out of a photocopy machine, but those were objects. Can i apply reactor to the particle sheets of paper? Im pretty sure i cant, and if i can i would need Deep Blue to calculate it.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to do it otherwise? I was thinking of setting up a few different spiral gravities etc… and randomising the particles to each one. But that wont get the sheets to bend in the correct way…

Tough one, but i am sure it can be done convincingly.

Thanks in advanc.

#2

I could be wrong but PFlow not at this time, maybe in the future with PF Tools but only time will tell.

AFAIK the only way to do it driven by particles would be with TP3.

Example video here:
http://www.cebas.com/products/feature.php?UD=10-7888-33-788&PID=15&FID=623

#3

Hmmm, thats what i thought. TP looks very interesting, ill investigate further. I am thinking of just doign this by hand. Instancing lots of sheets and applying the relevent soft body and wind attributes. I have done a very quick test and its looking ok so far, ill post a video later tonight.

Thanks

marc

#4

what deformation are you after? If you just want the papers to be bended while falling,and flaten when they get on the floor, you cold fake the effect by passing particles into a new event, where the animation of flattening is started. if you want them to get edges folded, it will be a hard one. maybe attatching objects to particles.
then when they are on a specific height near floor, delete the particle. so the objects animation will stop. bake the animation. then use reactor from this frame.
but I’m not sure if you can set reactor to take animation into account and simulate from the last frame. or something like that.
but at least you could get your motion with particles, and do only the reactor by hand.

But of course, TP would be the simpliest way to try :slight_smile:

#5

You could try baking the first bit of your animation out with this particle baking script, then adding them to a reactor sim.
Can be very fiddly as you dont want them to be intersecting and you can only really start the sim at one discrete frame. So you cant add the particles to the sim at different frames.

http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/pflow-baker

#6

I dont need to see the particles hittign the floor which is a plus. I am currently trying to get some planes with a cloth modifier attached to float in the wind. They are floating and bending nnicely, but i cant get the wind noise parametres to work yet. Gotta keep trying.

I did consider using Pflow somehow, but i cant any way of getting the paper to bend in the CORRECT manner depending on its speed and direction. I think that if that is off and the bending is random, it will be noticeable.

floopyb, that sound like a very good idea. I have never done that though, but will give it a try tonight. So what you are saying is get Pflow set up to get the nice movement on the sheets then apply reactor to that…Sounds good.

Ill post my WIP later on tonight. I thought i had something good yesterday, but didnt end well…

Thanks for the help guys

#7

hmm…I wonder if this is possible to do, so it looks like the papers react to the air.
another thing you could do to try to fake it is to use the mesher compound, and then add a noise spacewrap deformation to the mesh…

#8

yeah, but again, the deformations wont match the movement of the paper. Dynamics of some sort or definately needed…I wonder if flex would work…

Ill post a scene shortly…

#9

Here is a wip…im not concerned with the fact that the cloth isnt stiff enough on the paper, im just concentrating on the motion for now.

I tried the Pflow baker, and it works nicely, but reactor isnt keeping the sheets initial motion. As soon as i calculate reactor, it replaces all the keys, so its basically the same as this method.

Is there anyway of gettign reactor to work alongside position keys? Maybe by adding multiple controllers…

http://savefile.com/projects/808668990

Its a max 2009 scene

#10

Posted a new file, got the paper looking a bit better…now i just need to get it to fall down and not outwards…and then stiffen the paperhttp://www.savefile.com/files/1694532

#11

If you bake out the particles from frame 0 to frame 10 you need to start your reactor sim at frame 9. It will “Eat” the last baked key and replace it with a reactor created key, so hold/saving the scene is a good idea b4 simming.

#12

Interesting idea Jordan :slight_smile:

#13

I dont understand how that would work though. It will only pick up the keyframes from the first 9 frames and then just float down. I need the swaing noisy motion throughout.

#14

I GOT IT!

SIMCLOTH! Thank you simcloth. It lets you use space warps to control the cloth. Working well so far, ill post later on.

#15

Here you go guys, in case anyone is interested. Simcloth saved the day, i forgot what an easy and fast plugin it is. Love it.

http://www.savefile.com/files/1697957

Thanks all for your for your help and im happy to send out a scene if anyone wants it, msg me

Marc

#16

hey, awesome you got it to work. Would it be possible to upload a small preview or something? I’m two max versions behind you :wink:

#17

Excellent, nice work:)

#18

Sure, there is a preview up, but i did it in max2008, so you will need to use that if you want to open it. Ill post the scene as well, hold on.

Its a shame i spent 2 days trying to figure it out with Pflow and Reactor, and in the end managed to do it in 30 mins with simcloth and a few space warps.

There are 3 in total, one general turbulence one, wind speed set to 0. One wind with a falloff on it to push the papers off initially as they needed to look like they were being pushed and finally a drag force that kisks in at frame 40 and slows the x axis speed of the papers so they dont continue and go off screen.

Max scene should be up in ten minsn if anyone is interested in downloading it.

Marc

#19

here you go:

http://www.savefile.com/files/1698398

#20

looks very good man! :slight_smile:
so no pflow use there, right?