Following on from yesterday’s post on particle visualization we turn our eye towards ‘reactor’ in 3D Max to give objects mass and thus make use of the built in Havok physics engine.
The ability to add mass, friction, elasticity, etc allows various behaviors to be simulated and therefore a possible route to simulate the city. These are early days and we wouldn’t normally make such movies public, but in many ways that’s what the blog is all about.
So below is our first test at using reactor – there are obvious errors but we went for a ‘non realistic’ bounce with lots of energy and we think it shows potential:
3D Max Balls in the City from digitalurban on Vimeo.
Music by Portoponte
It was surprisingly easy to create, we are thinking of putting together a short tutorial, if people would be interested, as we couldn’t find a suitable one ourselves.
Where are we going with all this? Towards a simulated city for ‘what if’ scenarios, either using packages such as 3D Max/Maya/Houdini etc or more traditional Java based modelling approaches through to a return to gaming and the Crysis Engine.
More blog posts with various tips/tutorials etc to follow as we progress….