Page 1 of 1

Bouncing Balls Down Stairs

Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 12:31 pm
by RobboUK
Hi

For a University project I am compositing bouncing balls into a scene after trying and failing with Maya's Rigid body system I was directed from another forum to this plugin and website. I built up the scene using passive bodys and then created a few active bodies for the balls, pressing play then didn't do anything. I have since created a simple scene with stairs and two balls, I managed to get the balls to interact with the stairs but at the moment it's not very accurate movement.

The balls currently move very fast, im talking about within the 200 frames the animation is done, and the balls dont really 'bounce' really just fall straight down the stairs. Does anyone know how to make a more realistic reaction of bouncing balls on stairs. When I first started this project I was inspired by the Sony Bravia TV advert of bouncing balls, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP5J4W5GQ3w obviously this was done with real balls but I would really like to get this kind of movement.

So if anyone knows what sort of settings I should be changing for the overall 'bounciness' of the animation and how I could slow down the animation would be really helpful

Thanks
Paul

Re: Bouncing Balls Down Stairs

Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 1:13 pm
by Johan Gidlund
Bounciness is typically controlled by restitution.

Re: Bouncing Balls Down Stairs

Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 1:15 pm
by lulzfish
To slow it down you might use a smaller step size.

Re: Bouncing Balls Down Stairs

Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 1:32 pm
by RobboUK
thanks johan that seems to have given me more bounce

Lulzfish, is the step size in a different place when using bullet? just because I can't access it from the usual place in the solvers menu.

Re: Bouncing Balls Down Stairs

Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 1:39 pm
by RobboUK
Found it Lulzfish, thanks alot man, worked a treat

Re: Bouncing Balls Down Stairs

Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2012 5:03 pm
by frankmariusengen
Is it normal to not be able to set the restitution heigher then 1? I cant set my restitution to more then 1 and it still settle straight away. Any solutions?
Thanks in advance.

Re: Bouncing Balls Down Stairs

Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2012 5:38 pm
by kloplop321
Restitution is a ratio from 0 to 1 inclusively for how much is not absorbed by the impact.
A rubber ball might have a restitution of 0.98, while a bowling ball something like 0.02.
Perhaps look at the restitution of the other object you are hitting.

Re: Bouncing Balls Down Stairs

Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2012 6:06 pm
by frankmariusengen
Thanks kloplop321 that works perfectly. Cheers