CaronteFX General Forum

Welcome to the CaronteFX General Forum!

CaronteFX is a highly integrated, physically based animation tool (as an Editor Extension) for Unity. It aims at providing the necessary tools to create high quality off-line cinematics that can be played later during the game. It works in Unity 5 or higher, both Free & Pro.

If you have any questions, concerns, or comments about CaronteFX, you’ve come to the right place. Connect with our CaronteFX team and other CaronteFX community members to find the solutions you need, and discuss the latest CaronteFX news and updates.

 

Wow, looks really promising.
I'll read the PDF and watch the videos.
By the way, do you have web or .exe demo to test it?

 

Thanks @mkgm! You can check out our web here for more info: https://www.nextlimit.com/products/name/carontefx/

 

Okay, I've built a wooden door that breaks apart when hit by a metal ball (trigger by contact).
How do I keep the door from fracturing on simulate (tried glue but the parts go crazy, tried high kinetic friction but that makes the pieces stay too much where they fall)?
While I'm at it, how do I run the simulation in game mode? (okay, found this)
I'm using the substitute node, but my original object(s) are still in the scene.
In play mode my fracturing objects are not colliding with the player, do I add the player to the sim? (no, disaster).
Thanks

 

Hello Don,

There are several options to avoid the door pieces to separate when you start simulating: for example you could have an non-broken irresponsive version of the door that gets substituted by a broken rigid body version when hit by the metal ball (by connecting a trigger by contact to a substituter node), this will handle the visibility of the different objects automatically.

You may want to take a look to the barrel example that is included in the latest version of our package, I think it's similar to what you are trying to accomplish. In this example the barrel is substituted by a broken version when it touches the floor, the positions and velocities of the original pieces are preserved and the visibility is automatically handled by the substituter node.

Once you bake the simulation, the baked GameObject will contain the destruction animation ready for playing in Unity play mode, you can also make a prefab of it for use in any other scene. We also allow to bake specific frames of the simulation, for example you could bake the end frame of the door destruction simulation and add PhysX colliders to it so the player could collide with the fragments after the simulation is played.

 

Hello NL,

I´ve made a couple of testings in Unity 5.3.4 version and I´ve got some errors when I try to bake the animations:
Couldn't create asset file!
UnityEditor.AssetDatabase:CreateAsset(Object, String)
CaronteFX.CRBakerGOAnim:CreateAssetAndAnimationComponent(MemoryStream) (at Assets/CaronteFX/Editor/Animation/CRBakerGOAnim.cs:1160)

and

UnityException: Creating asset at path failed.
CaronteFX.CRBakerGOAnim.CreateAssetAndAnimationComponent (System.IO.MemoryStream ms) (at Assets/CaronteFX/Editor/Animation/CRBakerGOAnim.cs:1160)

No problems baking animations in Unity 5.2.3p3.
I hope you solve this issue in Unity 5.3.4 soon please.

Anyway, the tool is really great, congratulations!
Thanks

 

Hello Diego_CR,

Thanks for your feedback. We have done some testing in version 5.3.4 and can't reproduce your issue. Does it happen to you in any 5.3.4 project? The log make me think that it could be related to file system permissions. Could you fill a support ticket in the following link so we can further investigate the issue?

https://www.nextlimit.com/products/name/carontefx/contact_us/

 

Hi again,

Updated to Unity5.3.4p1 and reimported Caronte into my project and I don´t have problems baking anims so far. Maybe something wrong with my project files as you comment in your last reply.
Thanks for the support and for this awesome tool!
Diego

 

After an object fragments, the inside faces of the gameobject appear checkered. How is this corrected?

Also, we have a simulation in MatLab using Simulink to control the motion of a gameobject. At runtime, the gameobject's transform / rotation updates every frame and moves according to the simulation. Can I use CaronteFx to record the gameobject's motion at runtime and bake the motion into an animation for later playback?

 

Hello, the new inside faces are assigned a checkered material by default to properly visualize the newly generated UVs, but you can change it to any other material of your choice by changing the Interior faces material property in the fracturer node.

We also provide a tool to substitute a material for another material in a whole GameObject hierarchy. You can do that through the Material Substituter tool that can be found in the Fractures & Tools section of the plugin.

You can't use CaronteFX to record the motion of a GameObject at runtime but you could use Unity and some scripting for that.

Hope it helps.

 

Hello!

What is the better way to play the animation instead of this trick ?

CRAnimation.cs

Code (CSharp):

1. void Update ()
2. {
3.  
4.    if (Time.frameCount == 1)
5.      animate = true;
6.    if (Time.frameCount == 2)
7.      animate = false;
8.    if (Input.GetKey ("a"))
9.      animate = true;
10.  
11. ....
12.  
13. }

The simulation has been baked, saved and loaded to the current scene (CaronteFx_0_baked).
It is also saved in Asset directory as cloth.asset.

 

It depends on what you are trying to achieve, but yes, to play the animation you just have to set the animate property to true. So for example you can untick the animate property in the CRAnimation inspector (which is set to true by default) so it won't start animating, and then call from any of your scripts something similar to this:

Code (CSharp):

1. void Update ()
2. {
3.    if (condition)
4.      animate = true;
5. ....
6.  
7. }

or instead of checking for condition in an Update set to the animation property to true due to some triggered event in your application.

 

what in case if I have eg. 4 baked animations and depending on the condition animate only one of them ?

 

It would be similar, you can make a manager script with contains reference to each one of the bakes and trigger the animation of the bake you want based on a condition.

 

Ok, the question should be how to make a reference to each one of the bakes and trigger the animation

 

You should use the unity standard for that. To get a reference to the bake you can use: GameObject.GetComponent<CRAnimation>(), being GameObject the root gameobject of the Bake (the object which contains the CRAnimation component). This way you can get a reference to each bake you want to control (animate) in playmode.

Hope this helps.

 

We want to announce that the full Adam film made by the Unity Demo team has been released. This tech demo makes extensive use of CaronteFX. You can check it here:

http://unity3d.com/es/pages/adam?ut...gn=demos-showcase-2016-06-20-Global-AdamFulll

 

I have seen this and seems to be very interesting and useful, and well done.

I am making now a game for iOS and Android, with cars that crash into each other, but the physics crashing are not very good as we want using the unity physics, so I want to know if CaronteFx can be used for mobile games or is only for Desktop or computer based games or any other possible use for computer

Does it work only for Windows based Unity?

Of course that I understand that it will depend always on the complexity of the project and what is used to know about the possible result of performance.

Thanks for your help

 

Hello, keep in mind that the simulations that CaronteFX produces are precalculated offline (outside play mode) and the baked simulations can be played in any target platform that Unity supports. The playing performance will depend on the number of vertices of the deformable meshes. We have been able to run complex soft body animations in android devices.

 

hello , i love your product its very awesome and accurate , hard to deal with at first lack of tutorials i was wondering is it possible to play the baked simulation in multiplayer ? am using photon service and thanks

 

Yes, baked simulations can be played in multiplayer and this is one of the advantages of using baked physics. It's not different from any other animation, if they are loaded in each client your can decide when you want to launch them synchronized.

 

Hi there, i'm looking forwards to getting into this but I am wondering there is any more training material available than I can find - which pretty much is the manual and very brief youtube series. A more in depth 'by example'
set of tutorials would really help, thanks. Does any training for your other products carry over recognisably?

 

Hello,

The plugin includes the full manual and some examples scenes that will help understand the basics, and we are about to release an update with complete tooltips. We plan to release more complex tutorials in the future, but I can't give an exact date for that yet. The body dynamics (rigid bodies, soft bodies, joints) part of RealFlow will carry over partially, but not completely.

 

Hello CaronteDev,
I need your help with a configuration.

I have a 3D human mesh with a patient gown (the cloth i'ts a separate mesh).

The 3D human has a walking animation with Mecanim.
What I need it's to simulate the cloth (patient gown).
I did several configurations, but none of them works properly.

Here is my basic configuration:


Could you please give some guidance on how to achieve the simulation of the "patient cloth" while the 3D human is walking?

Thanks so much.

 

If HumanMesh is the animated body driven by mecanim you should add it to the AnimatedBodies node (to the Objects field of the node that you show in number 4) and not to the RigidBodies that you are showing in number 2. That way it will behave as a kinematic body driven by an animation, and the cloth simulation will run on top of it.

Let me know if that works for you or you need further assistance.

 

Hi CaronteDev,
thanks for your time.
I did what you suggests, but I'm missing something, and I can't make my scene work as I need.

Could you please download the project I made and help me with the configuration to achieve what I need?

_CaronteFXTest.rar (complete folder project compressed)
http://www99.zippyshare.com/v/mhXSk4Vd/file.html

_CaronteFXTest.unitypackage
http://www99.zippyshare.com/v/bsveWJMp/file.html

Your help will be much appreciated.

 

Ok, I will download your package and will give your further information about it.

 

What you are trying to achieve is something similar to this?:

https://gyazo.com/c78c74235db376f785a01673725eadcf

Right now it seems that if the cloth mesh is a skinned mesh being drawn by a skinned mesh renderer component it won't initialize at the right position when you define it as cloth body in CaronteFX. I guess that is the origin of the problem. I'm sending you a patch for that will also be included in the next version of the plugin and a "fixed" version of your setup with it running properly.

Also, it's important that at definition the cloth mesh does not start interpenetrated with the animated body because it will produce problems in the simulation.

 

Yes! that it's what I need.
Thanks so much for your help.
I'll be waiting for the patch.

Thanks again.

 

Hi, do you have any news?

 

Yes,

Hello, I just answered you in private. We have added support for creation of bodies from skinned meshes so now it should work the way it's mean.

 

@CaronteDev
thank you so much for the great support!
You deserve 10 starts.

 

Hello again CaronteDev.
First of all, thank you for the great customer support!

About the "cloth simulation":
I was trying with several configurations using your configured scene (the same scene that you prepared for me), but the simulation never finish properly.
What I need it's that CaronteFX can simulate and bake at least 10 (ten) seconds of an animation with cloth physics.

Please, try to reach 10 (ten) seconds using your own configured scene (the same scene that you sent to me) and you will reproduce the errors that I found.

Some problems after the failed simulations are:
* the system RAM reach 99% used by Unity
* unity hang-up
* the cloth "explodes" (see the image)


A related question:
When working with animations, the field "Animation clip" use just 1 (one) single animation. What happens when I require to work with 3 (three) animations in an "Animator Controller"?

Please, help me and...
thanks in advance.

 

Hello, it seems it's related to the mesh you are using for the cloth, which may not be manifold, but I'm going run some test to be sure. About the related question: if in the animated body node your disable the option "override animation controller", CaronteFX will use the current animation controller with all the animation clips and transition it has set up. I did this in the example I sent you.

 

Thanks so much!
I'll be doing some test too.

Please, let me know any news you have.

 

Hi. I've recently bought your package(latest ver.) but when I import it into unity I face an error:

Code (CSharp):

1. Unhandled Exception:
2. Mono.CSharp.InternalErrorException: Assets/CaronteFX/Editor/Classes/CNHierarchy.cs(1159,5): ---> System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
3.  

what should I do?
thanks for your help
and I use unity ver. 5.5.0 b3

 

I have a question:

When baking a simulation, the result is "just" an animator animation, right?

Which means, if I create a modest fracture simulation, with a sane number of fractured objects and a sane number of polys, it really shouldn't be a problem to use that in a mobile project, right?

 

Hello, we are going to check it with that beta version and will let you know.

 

When baking a simulation the result is a custom CaronteFX animation file, not an standard unity animation clip, which will be played by our CRAnimation component. We do this so we can handle softbodies, clothes, ropes, bodies substitutions, events, etc.

But if you only bake rigid bodies the performance is similar to an unity animation clip. Besides the fracture simulation will be automatically collapsed to a skinned mesh, so the performance will be better than individual game objects.

Yes, if the simulation is not very heavy it shouldn't be a problem to use it in a mobile project.

 

Actually I bought it a little while ago.

Haven't tested performance yet, but it's very impressive.

At the very least I'm having tons of fun destroying my scenes

 

Nice example! We are releasing a patch soon which among other things allow decompression and precaching of vertex animations (soft bodies, cloth and ropes) in the GPU (in supported platforms) and also improves standard cpu player performance.

 

I'm pretty happy to report that performance is pretty good.

On recent mobiles it's getting 60fps solid. Older devices (4 year old?), still get close (50~ fps), which on a scene that is pretty overkill (the image I posted above), I think it's pretty awesome.

Also this is the most fun I've had with a Unity asset in quite a while. It's impressive how reliable the tools are (for example, I was afraid the fracturer might give me errors on some meshes that have open holes, but it doesn't and it works very nicely).

All in all, it's an amazing tool.

The only issue, which is a petty one, is that the message that pops up when going from simulation back to edit mode is getting a bit annoying

(I mean it's useful to know, but maybe an option to say "k got it, the simulation will reset, don't bother me again" would be nice)

 

One issue I have found:

Trigger by explosion doesn't seem to work?

As I understand it, I set the explosion I want, the bodies I want, and the daemon I want.

Then as soon as the bodies start getting affected by the explosion, the daemon will be enabled. (right?)

It doesn't seem to work. The daemon never starts working. I even tried ridiculous values so that it would be really obvious, but nothing ever happens. The objects go flying as if they are only affected by the explosion.

 

Hello thanks for your words and your feedback, the fracture tools are very robust so yes, they normally work on bad meshes. About the player, we have improved the performance further, so you will get even better fps in the next update.

About the trigger by explosion: yes, that's the way to make it work, there are a lot of features included in the plugin and sometimes the interactions are difficult to control, what daemon are you connecting the trigger to?

 

I made a new project and tried it again, and it seems to work properly.

So it's probably something about that specific scene. Maybe I had weird settings.

So, false alarm, the feature works, it's probably that I was doing something wrong.

 

Great, let us know if something else arise.

 

Is there an API document website?

 

Hello,

CaronteFX is an editor extension which internally uses the Caronte Physics Library, so you don't have to interact directly with the physics library API and the plugin it's not intended for that use. All the user interaction is made from the user interface. We have a user manual which is included in the plugin, but you can download it also from the "User guide" section in here:

https://www.nextlimit.com/products/name/carontefx/resources/

 

So it appears Caronte is not working properly in 5.5 (I'm getting an unhandled exception and it fails to compile properly).

Is an update coming any time soon?

 

Yes I can also confirm it is not working in 5.5. Is there an estimate as to how long it might take to release a working version for 5.5?