Falling Letters Question

[Pinballwzd]

I am doing a project where I am going to have the letters of a word fall out of a hat. I need each letter to react to each other, bounce on the ground and then form a word. I would like to know what would be the best way to approach this effect ?

I take it that I would need each letter to be collidable and have mass but I have never explored AM Physics before except to animate a flag.

 

Is there a tutorial that would be a good one to work through ?

 

Pinballwzd...

[robcat2075]

Look for tutorials on "Newton" physics. That can do what you want.

[robcat2075]

Newton Physics

[johnl3d]

hatletters.mov

 

 

hatltters.zip

 

 

Simple example made some letters with font wizard set as dynamic objects put and simulated in chor without hat then adjusted letters after the hit ground to form word put hat in place and rendered

 

 

this is just meant to be a simple starting point

[Pinballwzd]

Thank you everyone, This is a great starting point. I have been reading about Neuon Dynamics for the last day and found a lot of very cool examples, tutorials and forum contributions !

I will definitely share what I have accomplished ...

 

David

[John Bigboote]

Don't forget the greatest tut ever made:

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=33186

[mouseman]

The wiki's down (I thought I was the only one spamming it! Just kidding), otherwise I'd point you to the Newton page on the wiki, which points to that tutorial and a few other resources.

[Pinballwzd]

What I have done so far...

I still need to work on lighting, add sound and such...

 

 

http://vimeo.com/45024195

 

 

Pinballwzd

[Gerry]

That's a perfectly nice start David! I look forward to seeing this develop.

[Pinballwzd]

Updated it.. It is getting more to where I envisioned it to be. Now I need to work on lighting effects and sound...

 

https://vimeo.com/45077530

 

Thanks,

[robcat2075]

Somewhere around here "John Bigboote" talked about getting things to fall in place where he wanted them. I think he dropped many copies of something and deleted all but the one that landed "right".

[NancyGormezano]

Somewhere around here "John Bigboote" talked about getting things to fall in place where he wanted them. I think he dropped many copies of something and deleted all but the one that landed "right".

 

Well - it looks like the link to BigBoote's Newton Tutorial thread for coins dropping on Cicero's pizza? is broken.

 

I believe what he did was run the simulation and then rearrange the results by translating and rotating the individual models into place. Something like that.

 

Looks like Matt's redone his website.

[Gerry]

You might want to work a little on getting it all a bit snappier, from the way the letters tumble out to the bump where the ball rolls back into the stand. You could hand-animate the letters falling and not get bogged down in Newton physics stuff if you want, but it all needs more "bounce".

[robcat2075]

There aren't too many letters there to deal with. I like Gerry's suggestion of animating them manually.

 

 

In another thread I made some comments on another forum member's bouncing ball test regarding pacing the up and down motion more realistically. Perhaps you will find them relevant. You can watch them in video form in this post...

 

Post 2

 

and this post...

 

Post 33

[Pinballwzd]

Thank you, I will check out the links and appreciate the feedback..

 

- Pinballwzd