The Gumball Machine - Rigid Body Dynamics

Date: 10/20/01

This image was an exercise to try and use Rigid Body Dynamics to create an image that would be nearly impossible otherwise.

In this case, the gumball machine contains some 270 individual gumballs. Each has one of six textures. What I did was something like this:

1. Create a fairly high density mesh representing the bowl the gumballs would fall in to - in my case it also had the verticle cylinder in it since the final model would have it.
2. Create a simple sphere (actually six), group the CPs and apply one of six textures, where simple materials for color, diff, spec, etc.
3. Create a choreography made up of the bowl, then pull in some number of gumballs. I used any number from 18 to 48. Apply a Rigid Body Constraint to each. In the constraint, modify the bounce to about 2% (since all I want to do is drop them in and let them settle - I'm only going to use the final frame).Arrange your gumballs above the bowl so that they will drop in to the open mouth of the bowl. The gumballs should not overlap. The surface of the bowl should have it's normals pointing inward for Rigid Body Dynamics to work properly.
4. From the choreography, simulate Rigid Body Physics for some amount of time (1:30 - about 90 frames or iterations in my case) were needed for the gumballs to settle.
5. Once settled, save the choreography, then export the choreography as a model. This should save the group assignments for the gumballs (very important!). Import this model.
6. Drag the scrub bar back to zero, change the shortcut to the bowl so it now brings in the model exported in the previous step. We should now have a bowl with 48 gumballs in it, plus at time zero, *another* set of 48 gumballs.
7. Repeat from step 4 until you have the desired number of gumballs. In my case I have some 270 gumballs in total. Far more than I would have reasonably been able to place by hand.

Things of note from the exercise:

1. I had *real* difficulties when exporting the choreography as a model. Many times it would inexplicably crash out. I don't know why as it was random
2. This takes *lots* of time for each set of calculations. But I'd rather the computer take time than me, trying to place gumballs by hand.
3. It worked best/fastest to use a simple sphere shape. Two earlier experiements with irregular shapes and groups contained inside the shape (think glass bubbles with air bubbles inside) took *waaaay* to long to simulate and would misbehave alot.
4. This was with v8.5p+. Steve indicated that I should try it in v9.0 as that's where their focus is. Unfortunately, it's still pretty unstable for me, so that wasn't a great option.
5. I have a nice bump material applied to the gumballs. The problem is, I can only see it if I hide the CPs for the glass bowl. For some reason, the sheer existence of the glass globe is keeping the bump from showing up.

The body of the machine was modeled in a pretty straight forward fashion. The chrome is a Darktree. The red paint was dinged up with some Grime maps, which were also used for bump, diff and spec. An image was applied to the chrome and body as an Environmental Map. It was applied to the glass as well, but far less opaque (about 20%).

As always, all feedback, positive and negative is appreciated and welcome here. Thanks, Darrin Mossor

Images created with Hash's Animation:Master