[3D Max 7] grass affected by objects

[HITandRUN]

Hello,

When I usually make grass, it's a simple spline object that is scattered over an plane on some sort. (Thanks for the tuts 3Dtotal!!!) But Now I have an object (buffalo) peeking through grass. Are there any suggestions on how to go approach this? Is there a way to manually animate individual scattered objects? Or do I need to make a patch of single blades to animated? OR, is there just a collision effect that I can turn on? Any suggestions on how to tackle this issue would help. Thanks!

-HnR

[Freespace-3DT]

Now this is a longshot and it will probably KILL your processor, but you can use reactor to do collisions between objects.
I will assume you have basic knowledge of reactor.
Having the animal walking on the grass, make it a Rigid Object, and check Unyielding so that in the simulation it will move as it does in the viewport.
The grass as a whole should be a Soft Object fixed on an invisible plane or something. Run the simulation and the grass should collide and fold under your character realistically as it steps over it. Tweak the options of soft body to achieve a realistic effect cause you don't want Jelly-Grass

[HITandRUN]

I don't know what reactor is, but I'm going to find out. Thanks for the suggestion!

-HnR

[Freespace-3DT]

Reactor is a very powerful plug-in that ships with 3dsmax... check it in additional help or user reference... and take 1-2 days to learn the basics of it, because you won't regret it. Good luck.

[HITandRUN]

I've been doing the enclosed Max7 reactor tutorials but I am not seeing an answer to a problem I am having so if anyone knows what tiny step I am missing would they please drop me a line?

I've got a simple test set up where a rigid object (ball) is passing through a small scatter object that looks like a few blades of grass. The ball is set as an unyielding rigid body and the grass is set as a softbody object. When I simulate the animation though, the scatter object falls before the ball even gets to it. Even if I set the mass to "0" or lock the vertices of the base of the object, the grass slumps to the ground anyway. Is there a way I can keep gravity form effecting an object in a simulation while still allowing it to be effected by other objects? What step am I missing? Thanks for listening.

-HnR

[jared1982]

Or, you could use a hair plug-in, like Hair-Fx. best to use the fur side of things, its then very simple to animate wind into the grass using Forces and you can also add collision objects like your buffalo. Looks very realistic aswell so it depends on what style your going for, Jed

[HITandRUN]

My only issue with that is that I am using the Swift 3D plugin to render my animation as vectors. I know that, at least with Maya's vector rederer, that the mayafur objects do not render with the maya vector renderer that is made by the same company as the one I am using for Max. I like learning Reactor anyway, I'm just a little stuck with the gravity thing. Thank you for your suggestion though.

-HnR

[zelal]

You can use standard displace space warp of max. If you want to simulate the walking through grass, you can link 4/5 sphereical or plane (experiment it) displace warp to you foot model and try with various setup. I am not sure about the result. But what's not trying?