Hey guys
I’m looking for some advice on making pool balls roll around a table.
This is not the sort of stuff I usually do.
I want full control of the direction of the balls so I’m not necessarily looking to use any simulation stuff for collisions, (unless someone persuades me otherwise). But if I can get the balls to look like they are rolling on the cloth, based on the direction they’re moving, automatically that would be a great help!
Here’s a still.
I know you don’t want to hear it, but a physics sim is the way to go here. I don’t know anything about doing physics in 2.5, but regardless of build, rolling balls are about as simple a sim as you can get. On the other hand, doing them manually sounds like a pain in the butt. No time like the present to learn a new skill, and just think of the fun you will have crushing suzanne with log avalanches, or giant boulders or something. And here’s a tip, which doesn’t apply so much to pool balls, but, generally, when you make a sim, you’ll want to make some low poly proxy objects to run the sim on, and then after you run it, parent some higher poly textured duplicates to the low poly objects, and move the low poly objects to another layer. much more efficient that way.
Cheers Modron,
and thats really good advice. I have to learn simulation stuff sooner or later, its a big hole in my skills.
I do maintain though that a sim as such, isn’t appropriate for waht I’m doing. I need absolute control of the balls because I’m using them to reveal logos in various ways so I can’t have them behaving like proper balls because they’ll end up getting in the way. If you see the attached animation, I cant have the pool balls bouncing back over the logo. There are going to be slower shots with a single ball rolling slowly into a pocket. Do you think it would be worth using a sim to get the ball to roll accurately.
But you’re absolutely right that I should learn it, so maybe I’ll do something just for the exercise, (then I’m sure it’ll become the obvious way to do things!!)