I am working on a warehousing animation that contains a great deal of lifting and moving of boxes throughout a warehouse. To do this using standard animation will involve a ton of keyframing.
I know very little about the game engine, but is it possible to do something like this. I would have crates all over the warehouse and the lifters would have keyframed movements throughout, during which they would physically act upon the crates, as opposed to using keyframing.
I don’t know if this is possible (or sane), but any help would be appreciated. If so, are there any tutorials that you could recommend?
Thanks for any help.
You could easily make a warehouse in the blender game engine. It is possible that you don’t even need keyframing. The bullet physics could lift boxes for you.
I think that I would need the keyframes to know how to move around the warehouse and which boxes to pick up. Do you know of any tutorials that might help me in dealing with statis boxes that are moved by mobile lifting pallets, just something to get me started. Thanks.
I don’t know of any tutorials but using keyframes are easy. First (in object mode) select the part(s) of the object that you want to move. Make sure that you are on the first frame. Next press “i”. It will bring up a list of actions, you only need to know 2 -
-“loc” (is used to lock the location in that frame)
-“rot” (is used to lock the rotation in that frame)
Last use your arrow keys to move to frame 2 and repeat.
I know how keyframing works, but what I was unsure of was how to get a keyframe object to work in the game engine. If I press play, the keyframes don’t seem to work. So it seems like I can have the keyframe movement or the game engine, but not both. Am I wrong?
You need to connect logic bricks up to an IPO actuator and set you start and end frames of the IPO. Do this to the object that has the keyframes.
honeycomb,
That was just what I was looking for, thanks.
One more question, though. So I have the platform that comes along and picks up the crate and moves it; now I want to record the IPO and turn the game into an animation. I select “Record Game Physics to IPO”, but it doesn’t record the IPO for the crate that I am moving with the platform. Is there a setting that I need to turn on (other than “Record to IPO”) that I am missing?
Thanks
The “Record Game Physics to IPO” only works for dynamic objects. So for the crates select “Actor” and “Dynamic” and “No Sleeping”. You then need to play with the settings to get things to work right. The “No Sleeping” is to keep the object from falling asleep when no dynamic activity is sensed.
The IPO for the crates should then show up in the IPO window when selected.
I think I’ve done exactly like you suggested, but there is no IPO info for the crate. Here is the blend if you wouldn’t mind taking a quick look.
http://blender.sixmonkeys.geek.nz/albums/kirpre/CratePhysics.blend
In your IPO window you can see where Crate.002 has IPO curves. Place the mouse over the IPO window and press HOME key to view the whole IPO. You will need to adjust the IPO curves of the platform or the cube to get them to sync together.
So the animation of the platform at 30fps would take about 6 (181 frames) seconds but the full animation of the crate is around 12-13 seconds. Also take the time to edit out and delete unnecessary keyframes in the crate IPO’s as there keys for each frame.
So basically you’re saying that this solution is not going to work if I have to acount for the movement of a whole bunch of crates and lifters. It sounds like the amount of adjusting of IPO’s would increase exponentially the more moving objects that I add. Would you say that is correct?
It’s hard to say without understanding the whole setup. But basically you have to think in terms of repeatable IPO’s and how to apply them. As an example, in the demo file you posted, the lifter moved the crate up along World-Z axis a specific amount. A little further along the track it did the same lift with the same IPO results just shifted in time.
Now, would you rather key the same curve over and over or would it be better to copy a clean version of the curve and shift in time? Think of these curves a cyclic and repeating and just the x, y, and possible z data gets switched depending on where the crate is going. In the end you still have to put in some work just how much depends.
kirpre, what you are trying to do is completley possible. It would be a good idea to go about learning the basics of the Game Engine before trying to do physics simulations.
It seems like the IPOs produced by the Game Engine are unpredictable and need to be edited quite a bit to make them useable. The IPOs for the Crate (an actor) are completely out of synch with the lifter that is powered by a preset IPO.
In the warehouse simulation that I am doing I will have lots of boxes moving around in a non-looping fashion and I can’t afford the time to edit each IPO curve extensively.
Is there somewhere I can go that is a great resource to learn about this type of Game Engine behavior? Thanks.