Creative bones

Hey all,
I just read an old post aboul simulating deformers and a certain"GooBall Lattice" that existed in the earlier dev of Unity. It prompted me to ask:

Using Maya (and probably now cheetah due to Martins dedication) , what sort of funky stuff can be done with bones? I have played around with a few humanoid characters, and ragdolls, and I have unsucessfully tried a tree( hoping nearby explosions would shake it), and among my assets I have a small plant with bones in it. Id like to use the rigidbody FPS to"bump" into the plant, and have the leaves sway (and an audio rustle?). Is this even possibile?

Also keen to understand what vertex weighting/colouring does when models are brought into unity. Some things are boned skinned, somethings just have vertexes painted/weighted, some are both. Has anyone out there done anything funky other than characters?

And maybe some tips on pipeline? Thanks for sharing
AC

 

Sure. In Unity right now with a boned plant, my best guess would be to use springs on the bones.

The PhysX SDK has a demo which is using softbodies to simulate the deformation of a palm tree's leaves, and Crysis (using the CryTek engine) has a similar system in place for all of the foliage in the game. I don't know if/when OTEE is going to add support for PhysX cloth/softbodies though.

-Jeremy

 

I'm using it to simulate ropes and cables, works fine. I'm also considering using it for "interactive" plants, which I'm sure will also work. Biggest issues for me are learning C4D (the app I'm rigging in) and understanding the concept behind all the adjustable pivot/hinge/spring variables. I've spent hours tweaking things, a bit more documentation would be nice.

Can't say I recommend C4D for this task, BTW. I've been pretty frustrated with it's workflow into Unity.

 

Is this the page to watch for that R10 update?