Topic: Soft body

Any plan?
Looking at the roadmap, "physics improvement" seems to be way to the bottom of priority.
What if I try to add it myself, is it difficult? Is it just some Bullet wrapping or is it something long to do and that it requires good knowledge of the matter?
Thanks.

Re: Soft body

Rigid physics improvement will be easy to add, it's a bullet wrapping essentially.

Soft Body is a bit more complicated because it influence the mesh dynamically,
and MEngine uses instances for similar meshs, so there is some things to do to allow dynamic meshs
in the engine and in the renderer.

Re: Soft body

I think there I is a way to use Blender's armatures to drive its soft body physics. (I watch so many tutorials however, that I forget where I saw it)

I'll see if I can find it

Last edited by Tutorial Doctor (2013-10-02 15:07:22)

Re: Soft body

You can't use Blender's physics engine on external software just exporting a mesh.

Re: Soft body

255 wrote:

You can't use Blender's physics engine on external software just exporting a mesh.

The way I am thinking is sorta hackish, but straightforward also.

I am sure I saw a tutorial where someone used shapekeys to move an armature, which moved the mesh. In this way, you have an armature which deforms a mesh (which is needed for maratis). That armature animation is keyframed and the whole thing is exported into Maratis.

The shapekeys are only a driver for the armature.

I am going to do some research on a way to drive the shapekeys with the physics engine (vertex groups?)

Re: Soft body

This is called deforming a mesh. It has nothing to do with physics. For physics to work (e.g. a collision between a cloth and a human), you should link every bone with a primitive which in turn has to be a physics joint, which is insane, not good performace-wise, etc. etc.
So your idea only works for "fixed" animations, cutscenes, and stuff like that.
Thanks for the suggestion though.

Last edited by 255 (2013-10-02 17:49:20)

Re: Soft body

255 wrote:

This is called deforming a mesh. It has nothing to do with physics. For physics to work (e.g. a collision between a cloth and a human), you should link every bone with a primitive which in turn has to be a physics joint, which is insane, not good performace-wise, etc. etc.
So your idea only works for "fixed" animations, cutscenes, and stuff like that.
Thanks for the suggestion though.

Its called Morph target animation, per-vertex animation, shape interpolation, or blend shapes.

There are advantages to using morph target animation over skeletal animation. The artist has more control over the movements because he or she can define the individual positions of the vertices within a keyframe, rather than being constrained by skeletons. This can be useful for animating cloth, skin, and facial expressions because it can be difficult to conform those things to the bones that are required for skeletal animation.

The Horde3D engine supports this but I think there the only OSS engine that does, could pull that and there particle effects code. Once we get the build system moved over to premake ill look into it. Horde3D code base is realy small and clean. The author works for crytek.

Tutorial Doctor wrote:
255 wrote:

You can't use Blender's physics engine on external software just exporting a mesh.

The way I am thinking is sorta hackish, but straightforward also.

I am sure I saw a tutorial where someone used shapekeys to move an armature, which moved the mesh. In this way, you have an armature which deforms a mesh (which is needed for maratis). That armature animation is keyframed and the whole thing is exported into Maratis.

The shapekeys are only a driver for the armature.

I am going to do some research on a way to drive the shapekeys with the physics engine (vertex groups?)

Tutorial Doctor you shouldn't have to do all of that you could do this with physics and auto keying in blender.

Last edited by zester (2013-10-02 18:10:18)

Re: Soft body

zester wrote:

\

Yes but I want collision so I need soft body physics like in Bullet.

Re: Soft body

255 wrote:
zester wrote:

\

Yes but I want collision so I need soft body physics like in Bullet.

i agree, full Bullet Support is badly needed like yesterday, Morph target animation is defiantly something I would like to see in "Addition" at a later time. Maratis doesn't even have a proper Particle Effects system yet.

Re: Soft body

zester wrote:
255 wrote:
zester wrote:

\

Yes but I want collision so I need soft body physics like in Bullet.

i agree, full Bullet Support is badly needed like yesterday, Morph target animation is defiantly something I would like to see in "Addition" at a later time. Maratis doesn't even have a proper Particle Effects system yet.

hahaha! I just made a post in the General discussion thread about particles. haha