RayFire Tool

#1241

Yeah, nice tests and I am totally agree with Hristo.
By the way, your test remind to me that I planned to add such feature as connectivity.
I noticed some not activated fragments frozen in the air, today I will take a look how to add such feature, don’t think it will be hard. So RayFire will check for such frozen fragments and if they are not connected with other fragments RayFire will activate them either.
Heh, while I wrote that another nice feature came into my head, what if it will be possible to automatically group or glue together fragments which are not not connected with main body anymore, so they will not fall each one separately but as one solid object.
I see here a lot of possibilities. :slight_smile:
Damn, while I wrote that another awesome feature came into my head, what if there will be such property as stress. Like if even some fragments connected with another fragments, but that connection is not strong enough and top fragments mass is high enough after some time top part will fall down on bottom and break it. Damn, now I know which feature I will add next in RayFire.
Well enough for new feature for now. :smiley:
What do you guys think about that?

P.S. I type pretty fast. :smiley:

#1242

Hahahha way coooooool that’s for a skype discussion!

#1243

That sounds awesome mate, I like the online brainstorimng - great idea!!

I think a good feature would be to add half-life to the glue strength, where after the first impact the glues strength would gradually degrade to a point where the joints start failing and crumbling. I suppose you localise it to an impact area and specify a radius too so only a contained area degrades.

Take it easy,

Chris

#1244

Hey Hristo, I’ve got a question in a similar vein. I’m looking to destroy something that is made of concrete, completely solid. The concrete support beam underneath a highway to be specific. It’s roughly 1.5 meters wide and 4m tall, unsure of the diameter (.75m?) I’d like to smash a cylinder horizontally through the concrete support beam, the cylinder being a placeholder for a person.

I’ve prefragged with Voroni Uniform into 550 or so pieces, set all the chunks as Impact objects. I haven’t given the chunks mass, other than what Rayfire set by default.

I’ve set the cylinder I want to smash through the wall (Impactor) as an impact object, and set it as a PhysX influence as well. I’ve checked Actiavte by Geometry so the cement chunks only start to fall when hit by my cylinder.

My problem is animating my cylinder so that it’s travelling fast enough to smash clean through the concrete pillar. No matter where I keyframe the cylinder, as fast as I try to make it impact the pillar, it always bounces off. Sometimes I’ll get decent results and it will crash through, but then when I turn on Demolish Geometry it simply bounces off and only breaks the surface again.

I added all the concrete chunks as Inactive Objects after seeing Pex Elroy’s building sim and seeing his results, but that also won’t let it smash through.

When I make the chunks Impact Objects, and my cylinder an Unyielding object I get better results, but the cylinder appears to intersect with the chunks and then they go flying in many directions, or just fall through the box that’s supposed to be my ground.

Is there a setting in Rayfire that will tell the object that even though it’s not huge, it should still be heavy and smash through impact objects? Mass doesn’t seem to be working, but I’m unsure if I’m supposed to lower the mass of my chunks, or raise the mass of the cylinder.

I’ve attached a crude image of what I’m trying to accomplish. I can post screens of my settings or my max file if neccesary when I get home from work.

#1245

Yeah, since sir Newton said force=mass*acceleration, you need to either increase the mass of your cylinder or its speed, you can do both easily. For the mass - go into options/open custom properties rollout. You can find material/mass properties there, that you assign to the currently selected object when the ‘use custom properties’ button is active. For the speed - you just keyframe it, speed=travel/time.

P.S: Go check my ‘Smartfrag’ tutorial and read a little about concrete. In modern construction (since the end of the 19th century )It’s never ‘solid’ concrete, there’s always reinforcement inside that you need to show somehow.

#1246

@ em3 - Sweet pass man. :wink: Agree with other posters above on their tips. Building the inside of the structure will help some. build only what you need for the shot and only where the impact would be; this will reduce model & sim time.

@ mir - I dig all your ideas - which would help a lot. And it would be cool to set the Glue strength per group, not only the global Glue strength; so some groups are stronger or weaker than others (with your other brainstormed features too). :twisted:

#1247

Totally with you there! We need that!

On the other hand - a WIPpie - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RhWLJ9qAAc

#1248

I too am struggling with this. Downloading tute now. Thanks Hristo!

#1249

Tyson Ibele just came out with a interesting script that I could see being a lot of fun with Rayfire.

I haven’t tried it out myself but it’s a building generator

http://www.tysonibele.com/

#1250

@ Masta - cool looking script, will check that out :wink:

@ ThallDesign - could you post some screens to show scene layout, and column impact confined to.

#1251

Checked it out, its awesome and quite handy. Only problem is that much of the generated geometry is intersecting and not sitting at the same levels so it just bounces like crazy. This was from like a 15 minute test so maybe you guys will have different results. Bottom line, it’s an AWESOME plugin!

#1252

Hey guys, a few tests I’ve been playing with over the last couple of weeks.

http://www.chrisborefx.com/stuff/RayfireTests.mp4 (mp4, ~ 4mb)

Cheers

Chris

#1253

Chris, that’s EXACTLY what I was trying to achieve in my previous post about smashing through a concrete pillar. Your results are fantastic, how did you set up your scene?

I’m talking about the one where a box impacts several cylinders in a row.

EDIT: It looks like you set your smashing object as unyielding, and then animated it through the cylinders, but how did you prevent your object from intersecting with the cylinder chunks as it moved through them? That’s my issue, as soon as an unyielding object moves through (intersects) an impact object, the impact object just falls through the rest of my unyielding objects such as the floor. You got past this, as I can see chunks sitting on top of your smashing object, and cleanly getting pushed out of the way.

Any insight you could give would be great!

#1254

awesome tests dude! I particularly liked the column smash as well.

#1255

Cheers Guys,

Thal you’re correct, the box is a unyielding object, but is also defined as geo in the physx tab too so it contributes to the interactive demolition.

before sim each column is fractured into around 7 - 10 objects (can’t remember exactly), the option to deactivate static geo is enabled as well as activate by geo. then have interactive demolition enables, with the global hardness turned down quite low, this way as the larger initial frags get hit they split into smaller peices before they get a chance to interpenetrate, I also had the time scale down alot too - around .25 if I remember correctly.

I’m working on a new version of this at the moment, I’ll post up when its ready.

Chris

#1256

Yea, I’d have to modify the script quite a bit to have it generate clean geometry for physics sims like rayfire.

#1257

Hah, yeah, I guess that will be a nice combo in max . :slight_smile:
Click a button to build house and click another one to demolish it.

to Tyson: let me know if you need any help in generating clean geometry for dynamic, will be glad to help. :slight_smile:

#1258

Thanks man :slight_smile:

I take it that the main thing is that no objects can be intersecting?

Can faces of an object intersect? Or just not multiple objects? I’ve never used rayfire so I don’t know how it breaks up the geometry.

#1259

Well, yeah, the first and main rule is that objects should not intrpenetrate with each other.
Also, objects should be separated from each other logically.
Another super awesome feature can be that your script also will create inner walls, floors, doors, tables, chairs and other shit. For that a LOT of people will say to You Thanks. :slight_smile:
Would be cool if your script will automatically set RayFire’s custom material, physical and fragmentation properties which RayFire uses. So users will not do this each time.
That can be implemented very quickly and easily. Let me know if you interested and I will PM you with all info.
I think that can be a big advantage for your script if it will be able to create buildings ready for demolition. :slight_smile:
Didn’t tested your script yet, but will do this pretty soon for sure. :slight_smile:

#1260

Ok thanks man :slight_smile: