Is it possible to make a ragdoll out of one mesh?

Game Engine Game Engine Support and Discussion
1

Is it possible to rig say a human mesh and make it be able to have constraints like a real human but be able to also have ragdoll physics? If so how?

2

Nope.

The only way to manipulate a mesh is with armatures, which cannot be manipulated by physics. I heard that shape keys will be supported in the future, but they don’t help you with regards to rag-dolling.

3

The way to make physics operate on an armature is described in the book in my sig. The way to do this is to use rigid body meshes to drive IK targets for the bones.

Once you’ve got a ragdoll armature, you can skin it in any way you like, using whatever character mesh you want.

You cannot easily go between ragdoll state and animated armature state. If you are a skilled rigger, I would guess there would be a way to do something like this at least to a limited extent, but it would be tricky and I don’t know how offhand. The simplest thing is to cut between shots of ragdoll behavior and animated behavior.

4

Is there a way to make a human a ragdoll then for the ragdoll scene?

5

thanks bugman, i tried doing a ragdoll setup like you said and i have the ragdoll armature working but the deforming mesh doesnt deform =/ it could be because im using apricot(having lots of problems with armatures in the game engine) but is there any other things you do different after you get the ragdoll armature?

ill try using an official release too to get it to work

edit: this is what i did to get the ragdoll armature zxcv7718

  1. make a ragdoll the old fasioned way(with boxes[or more complex objects] ball constrainted together) this will be to controll the armature

  2. then make an armature with the same number of bones, in the same places

  3. press ctrl+i on each bone to give them the IK solver, a menu will come up, select empty target object

  4. it will give each bone an empty, which you then parent to its coorisponding bone

then you just have to put the human mesh on the armature and make sure it does not have any bounds, that should work, i think haha

another edit: and bugman, it only doesnt deform in the GE, if i record game physics to ipo and play it back it all works good

6

Mack, the way I had in mind was for animations, so I’d be baking the physics to the rigid bodies (Shift-Ctrl-Alt-P) and then using that in Blender proper. In that case, the armature should deform the mesh just as normal. In the game engine… it might not work like that. I’m not sure if the constraints needed to drive the bones work in the game engine. You could try to bake the physics to Ipos and then use an Ipo Actuator in the game engine. It’s not realtime physics then, though, so it depends what you want.

Is there a way to make a human a ragdoll then for the ragdoll scene?

If you’re trying to do all this for the game engine, then I think the method I described to you might have been misleading. Now that I see this in a game engine thread I realize I may have had the wrong idea of what you were asking. Another good reason to ask these kinds of questions in threads, rather than in PMs.

If you’re doing this for animations, then the method I described should work. Please stop asking exactly the same question over and over again and be specific about what you’re not understanding.

7

ah ok, yea i didnt think IK worked in game but its nice to know this method anyways

8

ah ok, yea i didnt think IK worked in game but its nice to know this method anyways

Actually, I just discovered the other day that IK targeted to bones does seem to work. I’m not sure about IK targeted to objects like empties. It might be worth some experimenting.

9

interesting, im not sure what you mean though, i used other bones as targets, one was from a different armature and one i tried was coarmaturial(a word i made up just now that means from the same armature X] )

neither of those worked

if you read about it could you give a link, or if it was just a test, a blend?

thanks

10

Try this. Run the game engine in the 3D window with P and press the space bar to activate the IK action.

http://uploader.polorix.net//files/421/ikaction.blend

<edit>

That’s with an Apricot build. Don’t know about ordinary 2.46.

11

I did from what you said mack, but the human mesh doesn’t act like a ragdoll it acts like a stiff board. What should I do?

12

it doesnt work in the game engine like i thought it did zxcv7718, its just away to animate and bake the armatures ragdoll movement to an ipo

edit, thanks bugman i got it now