J.

Adrian Herbez
purplestatic@yahoo.com

Dynamics - Soft/Rigid Bodies

Both particle systems and Cloth are specific instances of Maya'a dynamic system, but they only work with highly
specialized kinds of objects- particles and cloth objects. What if you want to use dynamics to create animtation on your
own carefully-created models? Maya provides for this by allowing any object to be converted into either a soft or a rigid
body, either of which can be affected by the same fields and constraints. The main difference between the two is that soft
bodies deform when they collide with other objects, while rigid bodies do not.

Rigid Bodies
Rigid bodies are objects that do not deform under collisions, and come in two flavors- active and passive. Active rigid
bodies are objects that react to dynamics, such as fields and constraints. Passive rigid bodies allow for collisions with
active rigid bodies.
To create a rigid body, select an object and use the Soft/Rigid Bodies->Create Active Rigid Body or Soft/Rigid Bodies-
>Create Passive Rigid Body commands. You can also create rigid bodies from groups of objects, but be sure to group
them under a single parent beforehand.
Unfortunately, Sub-ds cannot become rigid bodies. To use rigid body effects with sub-Ds, create either a NURBS or poly
version of the given sub-D, make it a rigid body, and parent the sub-D to the non sub-D standin.

Using Collision layers to limit rigid body interaction

Dynamics can often cause a great deal of slowdown. One thing that can help is to assign rigid bodies to different layers. A
given rigid body only interacts with other rigid bodies on the same layer. This is set at 0 by default. Setting it to -1 will make
the given rigid body interact with all other rigid bodies in the scene.

Animating Rigid bodies

Usually, most of the animation of rigid bodies will be generated for you via interactions with fields and other rigid bodies.
You can also set keys for impulse attributes, which can allow for sudden changes in an object's behavior, like what
happens when a baseball hits a bat.
You can also combine translation and rotational keys with the animation created by the rigid body solver. Note that
although you can use both normal keys and dynamics for translation and rotation, you can't use both at the same time.
You switch back and forth by using the Set Active Key (to turn on dynamics for an object) and Set Passive Key (to revert to
keyed values) commands.

You can also convert dynamic animation into traditional keys, which lets you tweak the animation to get exactly the effect
you want. To do that, use Edit->Keys->Bake Simulation. By default, this creates a key each frame which mimicks the
dynamics animation perfectly, but is pretty ungainly. To clean it up, open the graph editor and use the Curves->Simplify
Curve command.

Rigid body constraints

Maya provides a number of constraints specfically for use with rigid bodies. To create a constraint, select an object and
use the Soft/Rigid Bodies->Create Constraint->Option Box command. If the object wasn't already a rigid body, it will be
made into one. You'll see a drop down list with the types of constraints, with Nail being the default. Here's an overview
- Nail: maintains a set distance between a point and the center of the rigid body- as if a rigid bar connected the
two. Only for active rigid bodies
- Pin: Connects two objects via a linkage. Can be used with active or passive rigid bodies, or a combination
- Hinge: can be created for a single active Rbody, or between two active or one active, and one passive Rbody.
Simulates a hinge connecting the two items (or the one item and a point in space), allowing for rotation about an
axis
- Spring: Simulates an elastic cord connecting either two Rbody objects (at least one active), or an active Rbody
object and a point in space
- Barrier: An infinte plane that Rbodies will collide with. More efficient than using a passive Rbody, but the objects
that collide will only deflect, not bounce. A barrier constraint must be created for each object.

Soft Bodies
When an object is made into a soft body, a particle system is created, with one particle for each vertex (or CV) of the
parent object. This means that fields and collisions can affect the geometry of the object, in much the same way that they
alter the position of particles in a particle obejct. To make an object a soft body, select the object (NURBS surface,
polygons, or a lattice) and use the Soft/Rigid Bodies->Create Soft Body command.
When creating a soft body, it is often useful to select the Duplicate, Make Copy Soft option in the option box, which creates
a copy of the object and makes the copy a soft body, leaving the original object as is. This allows you to turn on the Make
Non-Soft a Goal option.
A note on Goals
A goal is an object that particles seek out and cluster around- the particles try to align themselves with the vertices of the
goal object. A goal object can be any object except a curve on a surface- to create a goal, select the particle object, shift-
select the desired goal object, and use the Particles->Goal command. A given particle system can have more than one
goal object. In that case, the weight value of each goal determines how much it affects the particles. Goal weights can be
animated.

Using Make Non-Soft a Goal

By using the Duplicate, Make copy Soft and Make Non-Soft a Goal options when creating a soft body, you'll have a soft
body that remembers its original shape and tries to return to it. This can be a great way to add some responsiveness to
fields to an object, while keeping the model relatively intact. You can also use the same technique to add a bit of jiggle
across the entire object.

Painting Goal Weights

If you want parts of a soft body to be more reactive than others, you can use the Paint Soft Body Weights tool to change
the amount of control exerted by the original object. After having created a soft body object that references it's original
shape as above, select the object, and click on Soft/Rigid Bodies->Paint Soft Body Weights->Option box to get the tool. It
behaves much the same way as other paint weights tools.

Animating Soft Bodies

Soft bodies should be thought of as particle systems where the particles just happen to be joined up with triangles. You
can add fields and collision objects just as you would for conventional particle systems. Just be sure that you have the
particle system associated with the object rather than the object itself, selected when you add fields or collision objects.