Cinematic Physics In XSI Part 1

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Re: Cinematic Physics In XSI Part 1

Postby dedgecko on Sat Apr 18, 2009 12:50 am

New to mapping, but excited for creating maps and effects for left 4 dead.

Just installed XSI Modtool 7.5 and I'm following your tutorial, but I'm running into an issue where once I select all of the bricks that I've created, practically all of the rigid body properties are greyed out (ie elasticity and friction values). Given that this is a fresh install - did I miss a tutorial about setting up XSI prior to actually using it?

Or am I just missing something?

***UPDATE 4.18.09***
Been trying to find some setup information regarding this issue, though I haven't found an instant fix just yet.

Originally all of my bricks were just falling through the grid when running the simulation. After giving giving the grid a thickness (extruding from axis and selecting the entire surface), my stack of bricks finally started to work with gravity. I'm using the PHYSX gravity option, rather than using a simulation force (though I believe both will result in the same effect). Given that there are now two physics simulators: ODE and PHYSX - I tried switching my environment (in preferences) to ODE, but still that does not change my ability to edit the rigid body properties - everything is still grayed out.

Any suggestions?
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Re: Cinematic Physics In XSI Part 1

Postby S.W.A.T.Y on Wed Apr 29, 2009 8:30 pm

I cant find the weigh panel. Im in the part where you say "To fix the stretching you should click on the "weight panel" button in the lower right, it looks like a paintbrush, and something like this should show up on the left side of the screen." I cant find it for some reason.
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Re: Cinematic Physics In XSI Part 1

Postby chiefwhosm on Sun May 03, 2009 1:30 pm

Just to say after a bit of experimenting with Mod Tools.

As one of the previous posts states you cant edit elasticity etc in the latest Autodesk Mod Tools 7.5

This is because they've obviously cut out a whole load of features from the latest version, preventing you from doing such things as alter/enable:

Elasticity
Static Friction
Dynamic Friction
Caching
Lock Cache

They are still however offering the older version of the Mod Tools (Version 6.01) which *DO* allow you to alter these settings, and thus allow you to follow the tutorial through.

There are however a few things you need to alter on installation to be able to follow through this tutorial using the older version.

1) Go to View>Layouts and change the layout choice from "Mod_Layout [add-on]" to "Default". This changes the Mod Tools layout to look like the tutorial.

2) Unlike the 7.5 version, the 6.01 Mod Tools doesn't start up in 4-panel view. To fix this, there's a little icon in the top-right hand corner of the viewport, which looks (and is) like the standard windowed>fullscreen icon. Click it to get back to 4-panel view (took me ages to notice it, was looking all through menus etc for a 4-panel view).

3) Also, unlike in 7.5 you appear not to have your scroll wheel set to zoom in and out on your viewports. Easiest navigation means is to use the 'S' key, hold it down and then use:

left mouse button for panning
right mouse button for rotation
middle mouse button for dolly.


4) Since I'm a maya user and not used to the XSI keyboard shortcuts I'll throw these in as well for people not used to XSI either because they've never used a modelling program or like me they're used to a different package.

X - Scale
C- Rotate
V - Move

5) The Paint Weights menu is not as stated in the current version of the tutorial on the lower right of the user interface, it is in fact on the lower left. It does still look like a paintbrush though.

Hope that helps people who are wanting to use Mod Tools to follow through this tutorial.

Chief :)
Last edited by chiefwhosm on Sun May 03, 2009 3:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Cinematic Physics In XSI Part 1

Postby ScarT on Sun May 03, 2009 1:52 pm

Why did they remove those features?! That doesn't make sense :o
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Re: Cinematic Physics In XSI Part 1

Postby chiefwhosm on Sun May 03, 2009 2:12 pm

Autodesk are always very restrictive when it comes to free versions of their expensive software. I'm guessing the 6.01 version is before they took over XSI, so they've edited the program with their logos etc, but it remains in-tact as to how XSI wanted the free version to be.

Again, 7.5 I believe to be the fully Autodesk created version, and like GMax and Maya PLE, heavy feature cuts have now taken place.

Think of it as a blessing that they still actually offer Mod Tools. I'd certainly worry if I were a Mod Tools user that in a year or two Mod Tools will finish and all that will be left is a 30 day trial of soft image.

This sadly is what happened to Maya PLE users, and GMax ended up at TurboSquid after Autodesk dropped support for it. They dropped support saying they were working on a new and better program to replace it, this never materialised, and after taking over Alias, they eventually (as I said before) did away with it's free version of their 3d modelling package (Maya PLE).

Chief :)
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Re: Cinematic Physics In XSI Part 1

Postby ScarT on Sun May 03, 2009 3:21 pm

Ah, figured it was something like that. I just installed Softimage XSI 7.5, I'm guessing those features aren't cut from a full-fledged piece of software?
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Re: Cinematic Physics In XSI Part 1

Postby chiefwhosm on Sun May 03, 2009 3:45 pm

I shouldn't imagine so ;) They show up in the mod tools menu you understand, its just theyre not able to be used.
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Re: Cinematic Physics In XSI Part 1

Postby Mr. Happy on Mon May 18, 2009 2:49 pm

Hey stoopdapoop, I'm running XSI 6.02 foundations. I'm getting stuck at the very first real step, turning the plane into a rigid body..my rigid body buttons are grayed out! I don't think this is a limitation of foundations, so do you know any other reason why they would be?
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Re: Cinematic Physics In XSI Part 1

Postby stoopdapoop on Mon Jun 08, 2009 11:14 pm

alright guys, I see that the enveloping part is causing the most problems, so with the help from the guys at XSIbase.com I've found a way to automatically envelope meshes to bones AND not have to worry about parenting bones to meshes before you place them.

I'll have a tutorial up some time soon, (maybe replacing this one?)
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Re: Cinematic Physics In XSI Part 1

Postby PROTOTYPE145 on Sun Oct 25, 2009 11:19 pm

I have 2 questions:

- on mine, the bricks are transparent and only have have black outlines, how do I make them solid?

-after you export your scene, where exactly do u find it in source sdk and how do u apply it to something?

If someone could help me with this soon, I'd be very grateful, thanks, and nice tutorial! :D
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Re: Cinematic Physics In XSI Part 1

Postby Mr. Happy on Wed Nov 17, 2010 3:06 am

What is this new way? I'm having serious problems: nulls don't stay in the centers of bricks but fly away on their own and the enveloping is just awful!
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Re: Cinematic Physics In XSI Part 1

Postby Geowil on Tue Sep 06, 2011 6:39 pm

Awesome guide, but one point I would like to share:

I found it much easier to just paint the weight map while the model was in its non-exploded shape as it is easier to track which cubes in the poly mesh go to which nulls, granted all of my cubes in the poly mesh had stretching happening instead of just one or two.
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Re: Cinematic Physics In XSI Part 1

Postby stoopdapoop on Wed Sep 07, 2011 8:34 am

This is a pm I sent to someone asking about my new improved system, hopefully this will help people out with their enveloping problems. Remember that most of the tutorial is still relevant, the things listed below are just the differences.

http://www.mediafire.com/?bt6tem6xvm88bkf

there's a link to the script. Are you familiar with XSI scripts? you can run them standalone, or create a toolbar with a button that runs the script. If you need help with this, just let me know. but in order to save (possibly unnecessary) I'll just assume you know how to do this for now.

Ok, now for the differences in workflow. When setting up the physics objects, DO NOT create the bones, or tie parent them to the objects, just create the rigid bodies and set up the simulation. Since the rigid bodies no longer have parented bones you can simply left click on them to select them, you no longer need to right click.

once you're happy with the simulation lock the cache, then select all of the active rigid bodies that you want to plot and then run the script on them. It should assign a null bone to each brick. No manual enveloping required, and works flawlessly every single time.

Now plot the animation of the Null Bones (not the bricks) depending on the size of your simulation, this make take several seconds.

Now you've got baked physics information.

But before you export to source, make sure you merge all the objects into one mesh as described in the tutorial.

if you need more help, do not hesitate to pm me, or add me on steam.
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Re: Cinematic Physics In XSI Part 1

Postby supercargo on Mon Feb 11, 2013 6:17 pm

Bump...
Hello everyone.
Where i can find a script from the previous post? The link is dead a long time ago.
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Re: Cinematic Physics In XSI Part 1

Postby stoopdapoop on Mon Feb 11, 2013 7:34 pm

damn, I'm not sure if I have the script anymore. When I get home I'll look for it. Maybe I can just rewrite it.

Either way, it'll probably be a good 24 hours until I get back with you since I'm going to be very busy for the rest of today and a good chunk of tomorrow.
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