How to make moving objects collide and deform?

[kui]

Hi there, I wonder how to set up a scene similar to the crashing pod racers or colliding airplanes in Pearl Harbor.
The problem can be broken down in several steps:
- I'd like to animate an object (let's begin with a simple sphere) and make it collide with a static object (box). From that moment on the movement should be simulated, inheriting the speed of the object, but using dynamics for the tumbling and falling and collision with a ground plane.
- Deformation (softbody) should occur due to the POWER of collision and the speed of the object. The sphere will be deformed heavily when it hits the box, somehow heavy when it later hits the ground and less when it comes to rest rolling over the floor.
- Later I would of course like to make use of object groups that show different material behaviours and fall apart at collision time.
Thank you in advance for any ideas!

[bgg1]

Hi, I have tried also teh same thing for some time... but I haven

[artisan00]

I'm new at akll this tuff...but i did read a nice idea about this on the AW site....its in the how-to's , i forget what its called, but its easy to find (there arent that many tutorials there)...anyway, it involves pre-modeleing the deformations, which isnt that difficult with somehting like artisan etc..

once you have this "deformation model", you can duplicate it and deform more or whatever you want. then you can use ixpressions and dynamics to switch the visibility from fmodel to model as it collides with different surfaces. for more realistic collisions i would also suggest using blendshapes with different weights to simulate more realistic crunching, rather than fast switching, .......

i dont know how clear i am beaing here, but lemme knw if i helped...

In reply to:
Hi, I have tried also teh same thing for some time... but I haven

[kui]

Yep, found it, the idea behind it is interesting, for sure. And maybe even the best way to achieve the desired effect because of better control of the final "deformation quality".
But still I don't know how to switch from keyframed animation to simulated animation at collision time, inheriting the original speed and direction, but adding gravity... maybe this is an easy one, but I could'nt figure it out til now...
thank you (both) for the ideas, new approaches still welcome!

[artisan00]

well, for the inheriting velocity etc., you can just duplicate all the deformed objets withe the same keys so when you switch from one to the other you can just chenge the visibility attribuytes without messing with the motion path. to add gravity, you could have it applied to all your objects at start (the ones that need it at least), but only key it to have a magnitude when it comes into effect...you can use stepped keys so the value can jump from 0 to 9.8 or whatever you need....

hope it helps

[mads-tuxen]

Not awnsering all your questions.....

If you dont need too many pices you could make a copy of your object, scatter that using the scatter effect, duplicate your schards, deform the gorup or the individual schards to what you think the deformed object might look like and use blendshape to change them at the time of explotion. If you want the to deform again as they hit the gorund you would have to make the blendshapes for every shard, and the have to blendshapes one at the explotion and one as it hits the ground.
If you had some large parts and did that to them and then som small parts of random shape i am sure you could make it look great. Its not a dynamic solution except for the shards falling to the ground but if you want that i think you would have to write it your selves or buy it from ILM

Maybe you could ad a colision-event i dont know if that works for other things than particles.

Mads

[kui]

First of all thanx to all who shared their thoughts!
Today I came across an older tutorial which inspired me a lot,
the footprints-in-mud-stuff
(For those interested: http://www.aliaswavefront.com/en/Community...nts/index.html)
This type of deformation is the thing I was looking for, now I only need to turn it around somehow.
I would love to add an collision-event to my objects, don't know how to to do though, I'm still relaltively new to Maya.
Another thing not clear to me is how to switch from keyframed animation to simulation. Of course I could keyframe it manually, but just to understand it: I want to animate my airplane/sphere/whatever along a path or explicit and it collides with a passiv rigid object. From that point on it changes direction and is affected by gravity, see what I mean? C'mon guys, this can't be so tough!
Thanx in advance for any other idea...