Hi,
    Having recently discovered Chris Colefax's includes, I was wondering
whether there is a similar plug-in which deals with collision detection etc.
    I would love to be able to set up a number of objects in a scene and
allow them to interact until they've expended all their energy, such as
scattering a hundred elastic spheres onto a plane.
    There is no way that I myself could begin to understand how to do this,
but since getting online I've realised that there are some VERY clever
people out there!

Thanks,

Andy C.

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If it's any consolation it's on Chris's list of things to do.

Ken Tyler

Andrew Cocker wrote:

> Hi,
>     Having recently discovered Chris Colefax's includes, I was wondering
> whether there is a similar plug-in which deals with collision detection etc.
>     I would love to be able to set up a number of objects in a scene and
> allow them to interact until they've expended all their energy, such as
> scattering a hundred elastic spheres onto a plane.
>     There is no way that I myself could begin to understand how to do this,
> but since getting online I've realised that there are some VERY clever
> people out there!
>
> Thanks,
>
> Andy C.

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Hi Andy and all,

    I did quite a bit of work on similar stuff for a scene I was working on
and came to the eventual conclusion that the POV scene language wasn't
powerful enough for what I wanted to do. Since then I've been, slowly,
working on a Perl wrapper for POV. If/when it is ever usable I will post
here but I don't see it happening too soon.
    I also would like to do what you suggested but perhaps even more
interesting. Take a couple hunder miscellaneous objects, basic spheres,
boxes, donuts, etc as well as more complex CSG objects and throw them onto a
plane (or even throw them into a box) and see them all bounce around with
specified bounciness and friction until it all come to a stop. If I ever
accomplish that I'll be a happy camper. As I said, I'm still a ways off,
though.


--Rainer

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Well, this is not a plugin but I think it does what you are interested
in.

It is a program called AERO which allows you to set up a scene with the
laws of physics and create a output for POV.

Just have a look at

http://www.ee.uwa.edu.au/~braunl/aero/



Marc

-- 
Marc Schimmler

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I've done this with MAX's dynamics system and it was really fun.  The only
problem was the time it took to compute (if you wanted it to be accurate).
I don't think you could do this effectively with POV-Ray's scene language,
but as Marc suggested, AERO is a good way to go.  I don't think it's DOS or
Windows though (I think it was Linux).  It's worth a look if you have the
operating system, from what I've seen of the sample files ages ago it looked
fairly good.

--
Lance.


---
For the latest MAX plug-ins, images and much more, go to:
The Zone - http://come.to/the.zone

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"Lance Birch" <zon### [at] satcomnetau> writes:

> I've done this with MAX's dynamics system and it was really fun.  The only
> problem was the time it took to compute (if you wanted it to be accurate).
> I don't think you could do this effectively with POV-Ray's scene language,
> but as Marc suggested, AERO is a good way to go.  I don't think it's DOS or
> Windows though (I think it was Linux).  It's worth a look if you have the
> operating system, from what I've seen of the sample files ages ago it looked
> fairly good.

It also works great with Sun Solaris (and I guess with other Unices, too).
However, porting it to another system might be painful, because it uses
a lot of packages that aren't very common.

Thomas

-- 
http://www.fmi.uni-konstanz.de/~willhalm

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Hi,
    I had a look at AERO, and you're right, it looks great, but sadly I'm
only running WIN 95, so it's not suitable for me ( next time I absolutely
HAVE TO do a complete re-install, I might consider installing it - I have
S.u.S.e. Linux 5.2 on CD).
    I thought that some suitable software/plug-in would be available - Chris
Colefax's "Spray.inc" has some interesting features. It wouldn't have to
mimic real life exactly, just have defineable characteristics such as
elasticity, mass etc, and most importantly collision detection. I believe
that Real 3D on the Amiga had such features, and as far as I'm aware, it too
is a solid modeller. As I stated previously, my programming capabilities are
nil ( I get lost beyond "rotate z*(clock*360)"). I prefer to render looping
animations where, other than setting up the initial parameters, I'm not sure
what the outcome will be ie. multiple translations and rotations, at which
POV excels.

    Thanx again for all your replies,

Andy C.


Thomas Willhalm wrote in message ...
>"Lance Birch" <zon### [at] satcomnetau> writes:
>
>> I've done this with MAX's dynamics system and it was really fun.  The
only
>> problem was the time it took to compute (if you wanted it to be
accurate).
>> I don't think you could do this effectively with POV-Ray's scene
language,
>> but as Marc suggested, AERO is a good way to go.  I don't think it's DOS
or
>> Windows though (I think it was Linux).  It's worth a look if you have the
>> operating system, from what I've seen of the sample files ages ago it
looked
>> fairly good.
>
>It also works great with Sun Solaris (and I guess with other Unices, too).
>However, porting it to another system might be painful, because it uses
>a lot of packages that aren't very common.
>
>Thomas
>
>--
>http://www.fmi.uni-konstanz.de/~willhalm

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You'd also want something with static friction and sliding friction.
They're very useful when you're trying to get objects to react properly.
For instance, you roll a ball, but you don't want it to keep rolling
forever!  :-)

--
Lance.


---
For the latest MAX plug-ins, images and much more, go to:
The Zone - http://come.to/the.zone

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