This is my first time using Blender (Well, my first time working in 3D really, I’m still a first year student of Game Design) and I need help making my first game in it. I have read through the tutorials on the Blender site, but haven’t been able to figure these things out.
Basically, the character for my game is a slime-like monster, so that leads me to my first question: How do I make it seem slim-like? I’ve messed around with the settings for soft body, but I just can’t seem to get it very “slimy”. When the slime isn’t moving, I want it to kind of just sit there and look… well, slimy. But when moving I want it to roll along in a circular shape.
Also, it seems the very top and very bottom of the sphere stay rigid, instead of turning soft as well. This gives it a weird look when its rolling. How do I fix this?
EDIT: At first I thought this was due to a lack of vertices at the top and bottom of the sphere, but even after converting a NURBS sphere (which seems to have more vertices) to a mesh and using that as a soft body, this problem still persists.
I want it to roll smoothly like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgTVRVAAHrk
Another question I have is: is it possible to “morph” models? So, for example, if I pressed a button while playing the game, could I make it so that a triangle smoothly morphs into a square? And pressing the button again would return it to the original shape? I’m not sure if it will make a difference, but I’m most likely going to use models from Maya 2011 as I have more experience modeling with that.
EDIT: I managed to figure out this next one on my own after I downloaded and looked through 2.54
And lastly but most importantly; How would I go about limiting the physics calculation for certain objects onto a 2D plane? (In this case, the X and Z plane). The game will be a side scroller, so I don’t want the character to be pushed off the main path by any physics calculations or anything. I don’t mind if other objects can be pushed off the path, though.
Thanks in advance for taking the time to answer my long, and I’m sure annoying questions
No problem answering the questions - most people aren’t as detailed and explanatory as you are. So continue that.
Before I even clicked on your video, I knew it - Ember. I saw that video too. I make an example blend of a garbage bag that appears filled, and you can move it using the left and right arrow keys; now I feel like making a soft-body game, heh. The physics are very high, most likely because it’s over 512 faces. Here’s the blend. Surprisingly, you can’t change a lot of properties for soft-body objects; I tried, but couldn’t set the position of the garbage bag in-game, and I couldn’t apply movement using the object function applyImpulse or applyMovement. I achieved the limiting by using two planes that constrain the movement of the bag, but you can physically see the effect on the garbage bag.
That is exactly what I was looking for! I’m trying to imitate how you made that Garbage Bag right now.
Also, I’ve personally found through playing around that using motion - force logic works really well with soft bodies. It keeps that “rolling” movement, which is really nice.
But for some strange reason, I’ve recently been getting a strange problem when using soft bodies - they sink through the plane.
I create a plane (or just scale up the cube that is there when you make a new blend) and then create a UVSphere and change it to soft body and then run game. I did this before and it worked fine, but now the soft body will sink into the plane. It won’t pass through the plane smoothly, it hits it, then slowly sinks into it and then falls through.
I have no idea why it’s doing this. Does anyone know how to fix this? I’ve already tried turning on bounding constraints for the soft body, but it doesn’t really make a difference.
EDIT: Turning on Bounding Controls - Convex Hull for the plane works. However, it is only Convex Hull, no other setting will work. I assume it’s not supposed to be like this? What am I doing wrong?
If you look at physics tab, there’s a button to enable rigid body to soft body collisions. Click that, and the soft body object shouldn’t sink through the ground. For me this was happening, but only on tilted ground (not on flat, level ground).
Ah, yeah that seems to work, thanks. But it tends to give the soft body a bit more of a solid look. >.<
Kind of like there’s little solid bits floating through it.
I’m thinking that in Ember, the guy made a soft body that encases another slightly more solid soft body. He then used motion - force logic on the inside soft body to move it around. What do you think?
That’s possible, as I have tried putting rigid body cubes inside of a garbage bag (LOL, they stayed put, too). EDIT: However, that amount of physics would be CPU-intensive. Messing with the settings on the soft-body object will change the solid-look of the soft body; Here’s the first example blend, but with comparisons (i.e. a looser bag, etc.) included.
DOUBLE EDIT: Yes, Blender supports morphing. What you want is to use a shape action to move vertices on a mesh; it’s a bit costly, but as long as you don’t have lots of objects morphing at once, it should be fine.
I also managed to find the Ember blend file, so I’m taking a look at how he made his slime thing. I think I’ve mostly figured out how he did it, but he seems to have a box around his slime thing, and I can’t figure out what its for. Maybe you could take a look at it?
double edit: I can’t seem to get soft bodies to stop falling through all objects without turning on rigid to soft, and that makes the soft body look a little it strange, so I think I might have to give up on this project till they fix this problem. (It must be a bug because I just downloaded 2.49 and tested it there and it doesn’t happen)
