Learn how to create a scene of falling buttons image montage with Rigid Body Physics
With the release of Blender 2.66 we now have native access to Rigid Body physic simulation tools, which can be used to create all kind of effects. Using rigid bodies we can make objects realistically interact with each other just as they would in the real world.
In this tutorial you’ll learn how to use the Rigid Body simulation system to create a scene of textured, falling buttons that fall into place, forming an image montage. You’ll learn how to create active and passive rigid bodies, how to calculate object mass, how to model the buttons, and how to use the UV Project Modifier to texture the buttons.
WHOOT!!!! New Blender with Rigid Body physics, then a new tutorial from Gottfried on BlenderCookie!!! Love it, want more, please.
Thanks! This looks pretty cool!
Another citizen tutorial, lights fadings, limbs growing cold… oh wait! Just kidding thanks for the tut!
Ahaha. I thought about pretending to be mad that there weren’t more citizen tutorials. LOL.
Ok, so now that I’ve picked my jaw up and changed my shorts… wow. You could hand me the finished product of this and ask me to replicate it.. I’d tell you to jump off a roof. I’d have never thought it could be done without manually unwrapping and aligning pieces of the image to each other, one at a time… amazing. Thanks so much for this, I’ll now have something to work on this weekend!
Sometimes i think that tutorial makers are magicians! Simply clever!
Thanks!
Instead of a Circle Rim when making the hole, use the Crease Value.
This is just an awesome tutorial, Gottfried really brought some Nuggets!
The finished render is so stylishly cool, really a fantastic result, and so many useful tips and tricks(and hacks), really taking it up a notch, Blender 2.66 is a new level of versatility and power.
This would have to be one of the best (with its subdued epicness) Blender tuts I have seen in a while, thanks Blender Cookie, and of course Gottfried Hofmann!
Thank you
Hahahaha, it was really funny how you mannage to use the bugs in Blender to acomplish that, learned a lot, thanks for this amazing tutorial, cheers.
Great job Gottfried.
Tried to do something like this a while ago, and never got the ‘baking the UV project’ thing. Anyway, I came across a couple of things when I followed your tute. Not sure if they’re bugs, but here they are;
1. When doing the prop edit rotate around individual centres on all the buttons. I don’t get the influence circle with the mouse wheel. It works with move, but not rotate or scale, and when I cancel out of it, it forgets that I enabled proportional edit. I tried this afterward on a simple scene and it worked fine. Something must have broke en route.
2. It doesn’t seem that the baked physics are safe even when cached. I notice they are not saved in the same way as fluid or smoke sims, but instead in the blend file. Anyway, somewhere between saves I have some random anomalies happening which have screwed up my ‘end state’ for the image, and of course because all modifiers got committed I cannot fix this. I guess, I should have made a copy layer. Oh well.
Anyway, these are merely observations and not a critique towards your excellent tutorial. Look forward to future physics stuff.
For issue 1. If you go into edit mode and change the selection type to vertex or edge, then go back into object mode. The proportional rotate will work.
http://projects.blender.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&group_id=9&atid=498&aid=25535
Thanks. I had that same issue. I found if I hit ‘G’ then ‘R’ it would show up, but this is better.
Hi, awesome stuff. I was just wondering, why does all the rigid body bullet tests in blender feel slow ?
Because there is a lot of calculations to be made.
-Alex
It is normal for simulations to not run at real time due to the complexity. However, if you bake the simulation from Scene > Cache it will run much faster.
Not sure what I’m missing but some buttons still fall through the floor.
You should increase the “Steps per second” option in the rigid body world settings under the scene tab.
Oh man thatnx for an awesome tip, i loved that effect on Paramount in Benjamin Button, awesome TNX!
So cool
this tutorial was done in the maxcookie using:
-3ds max using plugins mparticle and Vray.
-Fusion for comps.
-and it took longer ” its 2 part tutorial”
-AND it was CITIZEN TUTORIAL
and then Gottfried Hofmann arrived
45min and you delivers an awesome effect with blender o.O “SPEECH LESS”
am a big fan Mr Gottfried Hofmann you are my favorite tutorial artist and author please NEVER STOP you are a sea of knowledge
This is freaking awsome! *proud to be german*
WHAT?!
I just saw the result and it’s beautiful!
I will watch the tutorial later today.
Thank you Gottfried for one more excellent tutorial!
Cheers!
Excellent tutorial. Very easy to follow and super informative.
Great tutorial Gottfried, just one thing: actually there’s no need to do Alt-C on the objects, there is an “Apply Modifiers” that works with a selection of multiple objects.
Spacebar > Search > Apply Modifiers.
Don’t have that here. Neither in object- nor in editmode. 2.66 linux x64 official build.
Do you happen to be using my Jay Tools add-on? It adds an Apply Modifiers operator.
I have the OSX build 2.66 54881 by Aloyr from Graphicall. I don’t know which add-on adds this functionnality, but that’s usefull.
Great tutorial! Here’s something I found which may save someone some frustration… If you use “Alt-D” instead of “Shift-D” to create multiple rigid bodies which are linked, you may find that the final Alt-C command to apply all modifiers doesn’t work. You will need to make all objects single users before applying the modifiers. I hope that saves someone a headache.
I’ am not sure what you mean with “You will need to make all objects single users before applying the modifiers. I hope that saves someone a headache.”
Simply select an object or objects and press “U”. This command breaks dynamic links with other objects (removes dependencies).
It is not working…hm..i have all buttons selceted and press “U” and than i have choose “Object” and “Object & Data”. Than i apply the Subsurface modifier and the UV projection modifier, but the resulut looks not very good
Here is the OpenGL buggy test render: https://www.dropbox.com/s/tk9fjrmdbk89gpm/0001-0250.avi?m
Thank you Gottfried, this is one of the best Blender tutorials I’ve seen. Didn’t know about that UV projection modifier, it seems really useful.
Ctrl+A should include “apply modifiers”
Mesh-from-curves does not work. Everything up to that point is solid, however this method is key and my 2.66 windows build does not show the same result of the ‘hackery trick.’
Try the shortcut Alt+C
And the Oscar for best Blender tutorial goes to… Gottfried. Amazing!
This is why I *love* Blender!
Alt+c does not work and I’m quite surprised that no one else is running into this, considering that the method used is a trick. I dumbed my meshes (all exactly the same mesh) down to 6-face rectangles and alt+c and the tab still affect the projection the same way, very different from the video. I’d download Gottfried’s blend, but I’m almost certain that opening his file on my 2.66 windows build will remain broken.
I have learned the same issue, after I used the most current blender version. It is not possible to use Alt+C with multiple objects, anymore. The last working version I have is r54919.
Well i dosent even reach to the point ALT+C. I made the buttons like shown in the tutorial. I have serval issues and im unsure what ill do wrong. Fist the Buttons drop still through the floor. But this is a random occurance. If they do theres no way to fix it it seems even rising the stepping as mentioned before dosent do the trick. Then, as a second, the buttons wont rotate. They drop to the floor in a straight way even if i duplicate them and intersect them. I must be missing something.
Klaus, clear the rigid bodies catch by removing it and re-applying it (active objects need to be activated, passive objects need to be passive). Also make sure that there is enough distance between falling objects and the ground and make sure that the ground itself is thicker (had these falling-through and catching problems but I played around with them).
It appears that the uv-project modifier is the remaining problem for me, because my image is tiled and so I cannot convert objects mesh-from curves the way this tutorial suggests (I have not altered ANY image settings in line with the tutorial). Frustrating.
Ah i see .. thank you
I try that.. lets see if that works
hey i’m running into an issue after i’ve used the uv project modifier. In material view, I see the image displayed on the button and everything seems fine. However, when I switch to render view, It only shows that fuchsia color. I have the image Texture node on all my buttons with the same image I have my camera projecting.
Hey, just wanted to mention that the bug mentioned at the 13 minute mark is fixed now
Fix will be in 2.66a.
Thanks for a really great tutorial.
It took my slow laptop 19 hours of rendering: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_KSeysEihs
Now I have a nice new facebook-header
Thanks to Gottfried!
Gottfried, thank you for this turorial – I noted that you use copied versions of the button object. Maybe this is a stupid question, but how so I create the same using a particle system which uses an object for the particle (or a group of objects)? If I am setting the particle reference object to rigit-active, this does not seem to have an effect on the particle objects. If I set this on the emitter, the emitter falls down
. So how do I apply the rigit setting I want to have to all the particles’ instanced objects?
Use the particles to generate them then press Ctrl+A and click make duplicates real and apply physics on those.
-Alex
Thank you. Currently I think this is the only way, but not sure if this copying is incorporating the fact that a particle system emits particles over the timeline. So how do you manually copy to particles that are not yet spawned (maybe once baked)? However, I found this thread http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?279329-Copy-Particles-to-Rigid-Bodies which has a script addressing this. I will test it (for my immediate need I simply used copies of rigid objects as Gottfried did, but that is harder to control as you cannot “spawn” them. Not tried yet if you can keyframe whether an object is rigid or not. Anyone tried that yet?
Thanks so much here’s my attempt http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORdGfAFFShM&feature=youtu.be
Great tutorial man,
i have learned a lot and i like youre style of making tutorials.
Thank´s man,
Schöne Grüße vom Chiemsee,
Wasti
Great tutorial – thanks.
I have one problem. The mapped image on each of my objects is not sticky on the
object when the object moves. Rather it is as if the objects are moving through
a “projected image space” which is the projected image from the camera.
David
Any chance I can render this without cycles? My current macbook is incompatible with the hardware requirements for cycles. When I do render this in internal – the buttons are simply silhouettes of gray, what would I need to change to make Blender correctly render this out in internal?
You will need to set up new materials for blender internal and a light for internal.
-Alex
Would I still be able to keep the image and make it static to each object that is within the area that I projected it to?
Yes that will stay the same, just BI and cycles use different material setups.
-Alex
Gottfried, you’re great with investigating cool effects!
And this is another good case!
Additional BIG thanks to Sergej Reich for his great work with Rigid Body physics integration!
This was a fantastic tutorial. Thank you for creating it!
I’m creating a version of this where the image created on the falling objects has an alpha channel, and the objects themselves have their own UV maps (diffuse, normal & spec). I was hoping that the objects in the alpha channel would maintain their original look while the ones that fell in the image would contain the image mapping. But, that seems to be pretty complicated and beyond my abilities. I’ll keep working on it.
Is there any way to minimize the shaking of the objects after they land? They all seem to wiggle, well after they should be in their final resting position. I’ve tried to apply a variety of dampers to get them to stop acting like jumping beans, but nothing seems to work.
Increasing calculations per second?
Increase friction and enable deactivation below a certain velocity.
-Alex
Holy Moly
danke Gottfried! this looks great – i’ll try this at the weekend … thx … wirklich klasse.
Thanks,very nice. Here is my try, mixed with cell fracture:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrvwFI4Ujkw
here is my rigid body tutorial:
http://tbagriyanik.wordpress.com/2013/03/09/blender-2-66a-rigid-body-animation/
What do you mean that hit A and A again because after that all of my object are selected and the uv copies doesn’t works on the buttons.How come that all of your buttons became selected with CTR-L?
Pressing a twice will select all/deselect all, shift + L will bring up the menu to select linked, ctrl + L is used to create links.
-Alex
Ok it works.But….. My buttons are duplicated with ALT-D.Second, wen i press CTR_L instead of join uv layouts i press modifiers:-).
Actually if you keep the simplified mode, and you put the projection modifier on top of the modifier stack the ALT-C works without problems for me.
Just awesome ! really great job