Falling Bodies

Animats

Development Version 1.1, April 1998

This is a development version, for use only by sites working closely with Animats. It is distributed at no charge to certain existing customers.

www.animats.com

Quick Start
Changes since Falling Bodies One

Notices

DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY

THIS SOFTWARE AND MANUAL ARE SOLD "AS IS" AND WITHOUT WARRANTIES AS TO PERFORMANCE OR MERCHANTABILITY. THE SELLER'S SALESPERSONS MAY HAVE MADE STATEMENTS ABOUT THIS SOFTWARE. ANY SUCH STATEMENTS DO NOT CONSTITUTE WARRANTIES AND SHALL NOT BE RELIED ON BY THE BUYER IN DECIDING WHETHER TO PURCHASE THIS PROGRAM.

THIS PROGRAM IS SOLD WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES WHATSOEVER. BECAUSE OF THE DIVERSITY OF CONDITIONS AND HARDWARE UNDER WHICH THIS PROGRAM MAY BE USED, NO WARRANTY OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE IS OFFERED. THE USER IS ADVISED TO TEST THE PROGRAM THOROUGHLY BEFORE RELYING ON IT. THE USER MUST ASSUME THE ENTIRE RISK OF USING THE PROGRAM. ANY LIABILITY OF SELLER OR MANUFACTURER WILL BE LIMITED EXCLUSIVELY TO PRODUCT REPLACEMENT OR REFUND OF THE PURCHASE PRICE.

This product is for use in education and entertainment. It has not been calibrated for forensic analysis, litigation support, or engineering design and should NOT be used for such purposes.

Copyright warning and notice

THIS SOFTWARE AND MANUAL ARE BOTH PROTECTED BY U.S. COPYRIGHT LAW (TITLE 17 UNITED STATES CODE). UNAUTHORIZED REPRODUCTION AND/OR SALE MAY RESULT IN IMPRISONMENT OF UP TO ONE YEAR AND FINES OF UP TO $100,000 (17 USC 506). COPYRIGHT INFRINGERS MAY ALSO BE SUBJECT TO CIVIL LIABILITY.

Each purchased copy of the software gives you the right to run this program on ONE machine only. If you need extra copies, please contact Animats to purchase them. Quantity discounts are available. Running a single copy of the software on more than one machine will be considered a copyright violation, and Animats will take appropriate action.

If you install the software on a file server, so that it can be used by multiple computers at one time, you must buy as many copies of the software as could potentially be run simultaneously from the file server copy. Ordinarily, this number will be equal to the number of softimage|3D licenses you have purchased from Softimage.

You can make backup copies of the software as part of your ordinary file backup procedures. Making copies for other purposes is prohibited.
Because of the nature of the animation industry, we make this exception: you may, in a business emergency, make and use additional copies of the software provided that you 1) have already paid for at least one copy of the software, 2) contact Animats within 72 hours of so doing, and 3) pay the normal retail price + 10% for each additional copy you made. This provides you with some flexibility in a production crunch.

Piracy

The commercial version of the software is not copy-protected.

All legitimate copies of this software come in a shrink-wrapped box like this. If you come across a copy not in that form, it is a pirated copy, and we would like to know about it at piracy@animats.com. Any copy of Falling Bodies found on the Internet, other than the limited "demo" version, is pirated. Attempts to sell pirated copies commercially will be pursued as the criminal offenses they are.

Trademarks

softimage and softimage|3D are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.
Animats, Falling Bodies, and www.animats.com are trademarks of Animats.
Quick Start

What's on the CD-ROM:

The files for the effect Falling Bodies
Several "Anatomy modules".
The installer.

Installation:
The effect comes on a CD-ROM. It can only be installed onto an NT/Intel machine running Softimage 3.7 or later.

Brief installation instructions:

Insert CD-ROM.
Open the CD-ROM in File Manager/Explorer.
Double-click on "FallingBodies.exe"
Follow the instructions given by the setup program.

This will install the effect and the "anatomy modules".

The documentation and the databases will NOT be automatically installed, nor will the movies.

Use DB Exchange in Softimage to copy the databases E:\anatomy" and "E:\fallingdemos" to some convenient place on your hard drive.

Open one of the scenes in one of the new databases, and try "Motion->Effects->Falling Bodies".Watch.

Common installation problems

If you get error messages from the installer, and it's not immediately obvious what the problem is, please let us know.

Information for system administrators

The installer installs the effect in the directories of the copy of Softimage you select, It does not alter any Softimage scripts, set any registry variables, or make any other environment changes. It does not install any DLLs other than the effect DLL "DynamicActor.DLL". The minimum privileges required to install the effect are write permission for the "%SI_LOCATION%\3d\custom" directory and its subdirectories. Installation requires about 5MB.

Installing this version will overwrite the previous version of Falling Bodies. If you have to go back, you can re-install an older version of Falling Bodies, and this one will be overwritten.

To "Uninstall", proceed as for "Install", but when presented with "Install" and "Uninstall" buttons, click on "Uninstall".

Using Falling Bodies

Changes since Falling Bodies One

Moving Obstacles

In Falling Bodies One, everything but the character being simulated is stationary. In this new version, animated objects in the scene can move. So you can do, for example, a character in a moving chair or vehicle, or a character being hit by a truck.Typically, you hand-animate the background object, and let it hit the character being controlled by Falling Bodies. The character controlled by Falling Bodies will respond to any collisions with moving background objects. This is one-way; Falling Bodies won't change the motion of the background objects.

The user interface is exactly the same as before, but now, Falling Bodies pays attention to animation in the scene.

Several restrictions apply to background objects animated in the scene:

The root object of a moving background object must be animated with explicit translation. If you've previously animated something with a path, you can use the Plot command in Softimage to make the explicit translation keys needed.
Certain types of animation in the scene may cause problems. Animating scale, or animating rotation at points that aren't IK joints or roots, may confuse this version of Falling Bodies. Please report problems in this area.
You can create situations where an irresistable force meets an immovable object. If you animate a car and let it hit a character controlled by Falling Bodies, that's fine. But if you let the car try to push the character through a wall, Falling Bodies will quit at the point it determines you've requested a physical impossibility. It may take a minute to give up, as it tries to somehow solve an impossible problem.

Characters with skin

This exciting new feature makes it possible to use Falling Bodies on realistic Softimage characters with flexible envelope skin.

Both local and global envelopes are supported.

Internally, Falling Bodies is a rigid body simulator, so it uses, within Falling Bodies, a set of rigid bodies that approximate the flexible skin. Each skeleton component (joint, null, or other model) with attached skin is treated as a rigid body, using the skin vertices weighted to that skeleton component. The result is a rough approximation to the skin. This is what you see in the Falling Bodies window while Falling Bodies is running. When Falling Bodies finishes, the character's motion in Softimage is updated.

This feature can also be used for some kinds of soft-body dynamics. Falling Bodies is a rigid body simulator, but models can be built which look soft, by building an envelope around an IK chain. See our "noodle" example.

Hide/Show support

Objects in the scene which have been hidden with Display->Hide are now invisible to Falling Bodies.