I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been working on blender for 24 hours straight and need sleep, but, the problem I was working on the whole day just flipped around on me…
I’m in Cycles, and I just had 3 boxes fall down and roll down a slope by physics settings. I couldn’t believe it.
I though Blender only allows physics in the Game Engine? Stack Exchange kept saying physics in Cycles = nope. This is crazy! I’m perplexed! I’m confused!
Does this mean I can:
Render my “5 day render” movie of my artificial intelligence baby in Cycles.
With Physics happening as the baby learns things.
With code running the babies brain? Or is that the part left out?
Cycles is just a renderer so nothing to do with the physics simulations
The blender rigid body physics are separate from whatever renderer you are using and do not rely on any game engine. What you actually want to do will determine if these are suitable or if you need to use the game engine
Does this mean I can:
Render my “5 day render” movie of my artificial intelligence baby in Cycles.
With Physics happening as the baby learns things.
With code running the babies brain? Or is that the part left out?
No idea what any of these are so cannot say yes or no.
If you want to actually use the game engine then that does not use cycles
Its potentially possible to do machine learning with python in the game engine, would require a lot of work though, and some way of storing the learning information gathered so far (so it isn’t lost when you exit the game).
Do I have to use the game engine to use code (to do Machine Learning)? Or can I stay in Cycles, run physics, and run the code? If not, then why? It almost seems that I can get rid of needing the game engine all together, strange. Why wouldn’t code run When in Cycles mode.
I guess I should also ask, what in the world would I need the game engine for then anyhow?? Game nodes? I don’t need those.
“alive” and “thinking” are both really vague they could mean anything.
The only reason I suggested using BGE (apart from this being the BGE forum) is because you can easily obtain the forces, rotations and many other elements during runtime which you could potentially abstract to data the computer can learn from next run time.
I think right now you need to split up the problem of “thinking” and “alive” and determine which components/ behaviors will help you achieve this.
By alive I mean the machine (the virtual baby) will be a real baby jigglin around n what not. I’m not adding thinking (remembering *senses) in this project, but the brain algorithm CAN be considered thinking in a sense.
But forces and rotations are in Cycles & Physics too though. I’ll be using code, I don’t even get what is this “get at runtime” either because if a bone moves then it will interact in the world with position and force I don’t need to grab the numbers, and if do, can use code, no BGE, right? Python/code works in Cycles, no BGE needed… ?
I recommend you keep tinkering with it and wait for eevee, even if you need to make minor changes it would still be viable, just wait for the materials etc, the rest *should be ok to port into the next blender version(2.8x). That is just my perspective. I’m also not sure this is the correct forum for your question, OTOH someone may say the same in another forum ;)…so stick around.
so you should probably bake your physics and then render it out…I’m less knowledgeable about that, but I know it is possible…and fairly certain that is the way to go…but only you know for certain the best path for your project. I would check again on the general, or blender and cg discussion threads on how to do it…unless someone here has a better solution for you…
The Blender Physics (see Physics tab when having engines “Blender Render” or “Cycles Render” are set) applies when running the Blender animation and the render.
The BGE Physics applies when running the BGE (see Physics tab when having engines “Blender Game” is set). Keep in mind the BGE is not Blender.
You can record (bake) physics data of game objects while running the BGE and apply the recorded data to the animation of Blender objects.
Blender Physics has other options than BGE physics (e.g. force fields, cloth simulation). Blender animations often have different needs than games. The major difference is the processing time. A game still has 1s/60 to process everything (logic, physics, render) while the animation can consume much more time. This means long running physics calculation are not sufficient in games. Therefore animations can be much more precise and with much more details.