RE:flexible bars
 

Hi Fellow Vizards,

Is it possible to simulate (emulate) flexibility in an object, for instance an steel bar? My sim requires a user to pick up various steel products with a virtual forklift, which I have managed to do quite successfully using physics, but the real steel bars and products have a certain amount of flexibility inherent in them and I haven't found a way of doing this. Can it be done?

Regards,

Nige

There are a few ways you can accomplish this.

1) You can manually generate the bars using On-The-Fly geometry and then manually modify the vertices to simulate bending.

2) You can model the bar in 3dsmax as a character with a skeletal structure. You can setup the desired vertex skinning and create a bending animation. You would then interpolate through the bending animation in Vizard to make the bar bend. If you have experience with modeling skinned characters in 3dsmax then this should not be too difficult to do.

Thanks for the ever prompt reply.



I haven't had much experience of character modeling, mainly arch viz type stuff, but that seems lees frightening than the first solution (bundles of 10 - 20 3m bars all 8 - 25mm diam):eek:. Anyway i feel i know my way around max well enough to have a stab at character studio.

Thanks again :cool: