Speed Animation Challenge - Week 01 - Swing

[Freespace-3DT]

That's a lovely voice!

Well, the swing is reactor rope + a rigid body hanging from the rope ( the seat ), and I simply linked the body to the seat.

[LostBear]

thanks
hmmm...i tried that but it didnt seem to work. i can get the seat and the ropes ok but the chrachter doesnt stay with the seat. did you link vertices to his hands?

[Titan3]

Well, here's a first look at my entry, the story is about that little robot that goes a little bit too far when he decides to go on the whole new XZK4000 swing...what will happen to him? You'll have to wait and see.
Still to be added:
scene prop objects
textures
animations
some effects
sound
Hope you like my ideea

[LostBear]

nice one titan...think i can see were that ones going!!

Freespace - ughhh. Still cant seem to make this work. I have the swing setup...and linked the "body" to it...but all i get is this...am i missing something?

http://www.maxforever.co.uk/3dt/swing/WIP_reactor.mov

LostBear

[Diabolos]

I misssed the launch I will be home from my business trip tonight and I will start right away!

D,

[Freespace-3DT]

Titan3: I've got an ideea what you want to do, too... But who knows what your evil ingenious mind will create... Funny looking robot though... Looks like a bunch of trash cans stuck together, reminds me of Robots.

LostBear: First of all, no need to make the body a rigid body. My character isn't even in the simulation, it is added afterwards. Just direct link it to the swing, like you link any object in 3dsmax ( select&link ), that's what I meant, but do it after you've gotten the swing to swing. To get the swing to swing, make a powerful wind to blow it, and then stop the wind. The swing should keep on swinging for quite a while, depending on mass and the rope's properties. Second, what screencapture program did you use to record video??

Diabolos: Welcome. Please make yourself at home and come up with a crazy ideea for this challenge. Feel free to post WIPs cause myself and the others are here to help you out if you get stuck.

[LostBear]

Freespace ahhhh....suddenly it all becomes clear! thx...ill give that a shot

i used camtasia studio to record the video

[LostBear]

ok i think im getting somewhere

http://www.maxforever.co.uk/3dt/swing/WIP_reactor2.mov

[shiroii]

Titan3 and Diabolos, looking forward to your entries

Lostbear, maybe you can use this, here's how I solved the swing problem, it's in maya, but the principles are the same.

-I made the swing geo
-gave bones to the ropes and skinned them
-added an IKspline. This is usually used to create the spinal column in characters and gives you a lot of simplified control. So if you have 300 bones, you can control them with only 4 or 10 or whatever points. If you pull out one control, everything else responds to it.
-Next I made some clusters and gave the clusters handles. This is not something in max, but it basically means that I picked the control points (cv's on the spline) and made the acceceble more easily.
-Then I just point and orient constraint my main character control to the swing.
-then I parented the lowest rope control to the swing control. If I now move the seat the rope will move allong. I could have gone farther and actually weighted the parenting so that everything moves along with the bottom one, but I'll do it by hand

Hope that helps a bit, it doesn't use any dynamics, which makes it more easy to do.

[LostBear]

Thanks Shiroii

OMG it was staring me in the face....didnt even think about rigging it!!

Max has similar controls but a though just struck me. Dont know if maya has this at all but MAX has a reaction diolog. This means that you can wire up one bones rotation to a slider and add in all the other bones and all the child bones will rotate with falloff...like a finger curling.

Oh man. its official then...more than one way to skin a cat!

ill give this a wiz...ill post it if it works out

[Titan3]

lol, I know what you think I'll do freespace...but I won't I'll do something totally unexpected ... because I dont want to do something that will be anticipated

[LostBear]

nice one. (no offense freespace...thanx fro advice but reactor was confusing me, i could see how it would work out though just couldnt make the darn thing do it!)

ok...took me a wee while but i have managed to rig the swing.

all boned up and skinned (needs tweak its not perfect) and wired up with reaction manager to a custome UI slider...phew!)

http://www.maxforever.co.uk/3dt/swing/WIP_reaction.mov


sweet...now ive got a rig, i can start actually creating...onward!

cheers u guys

[Pikmin]

Ill try to participe and doing something tonigh.

YOu should past more time on the character animation then physic stuff . (that should be illegal btw)

[LostBear]

Welcome back pikmin look forward to seeing your work here.

[shiroii]

Hey Pikmin, good to have you here

About the dynamics.
That's kind of a tough one, I think it's just on the edge. Wouldn't they use dynamics in features, or productions for these kind of things? Obviously you will hand-animate the character completely, so I don't think dynamics would be a big deal in this case. UNLESS you want him to drop off the swing and switch him with a ragg doll and just let the simulation run. THAT WOULD BE VERY ILLIGAL and veeery -->

What do you guys think?

Anyhow, Lostbear has found his solution, glad I could help ^_^

Now here's my update. I've worked a bit on it tonight, nothing impressive yet, but the block is much more detailed, and the timing more refined. Next I'll clean things up more and start doing some details.

Speed animation Challange week 1: swing - version 2 - winzip - 900kb

ow yeah, didn't work on the dog, so he still moves to slow