simulation

[DegelmanRD]

Hi everyone, I just registered in hopes of having some questions answered.

I'll be popping in over the next few weeks but just want to get a quick heads-up on everyone's opinion of the physical simulation in LW. I am looking for a piece of software or plugin that can simulate something like the following:

Picture a large rectangular tank to be filled with some material. The floor of the tank is essentially a feed mechanism to move the material toward the rear of the tank. At the rear of the tank there is a rotating mechanism which projects the material outward.
My question is this: can LW roughly simulate the area covered by the material as it is projected from the machine? It doesn't need to be perfectly accurate, but I'm looking for a rough idea of where the material could end up given different conditions.
Another bonus would be to simulate how the material acts while it is in the tank, and how a piece of debris may affect the mechanisms.


I was hoping to have some models ready to upload but it looks like that will have to wait for a bit.
The material in question is manure...here's some links to better explain what I'm talking about. We don't have numbers yet regarding density and all that, but we're working on testing different types & moisture content, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXZYmnR4x6A
http://www.degelman.com/index.php?p=Manure%20Spreader%20-%20Coming%20Soon

I guess my question is how well is LW suited for a task like this? Or is there other software I should be looking at?

We're concerned with different beater designs at the rear of the machine; if we could simulate this action it would save tons of time vs building a physical prototype and testing it manually.
Data on beater RPM & floor speed are available, as well as testing data from the current design (spread pattern, etc).

If anyone has insight into this I'd love to hear it; alternatively, if somebody wanted to do a proof-of-concept we'd be interested in checking it out...if it looks promising we'd have reason to snag a couple LW licences and contract some work.

[silviotoledo]

You will need Realflow, Maya Fluids, Blender or Houdini to simulate the material indide the tank.

Realflow is easy ( several online tutors ) to use and works fine with lightwave.

Lightwave will not fill the tank, except on a fake way. I mean you add a box inside and animate it growing while particles enters. With a lot of dust, maybe it will work.

[SplineGod]

I think this could be easily be done in LW using some simple techniques that are easier to control then dynamics.
Heres some simple examples that use no particles or dynam ics:
http://www.3dtrainingonline.com/examples/cement.mov
http://www.3dtrainingonline.com/examples/fill_up.mov
http://www.3dtrainingonline.com/examples/morph_text.mov

[silviotoledo]

Once lightwave particles will not joint the volum, you will need to animate the volum growing.

Here I did a quick sample with bone deform animation growing to show a way to do it on lightwave.


With a lot of dust over, it would be ok :)


Nice samples Larry!

Hey, I wanna see your MOCAP anim with IK Booster!

[SplineGod]

I have the mocap videos if you want to contact me. :)

[DegelmanRD]

Hmmm, interesting examples...I've been playing around a bit with a few different programs and haven't found exactly what I'm looking for yet.
I suppose when it comes down to it, I would like to have a filled tank, then add motion to the beaters and have the material in the tank expelled.
I'm having trouble getting the material to "clump" properly, any thoughts?
I also couldn't get the realflow demo to work...anytime I did anything RF related, it immediately crashed.

[SplineGod]

I would create it in parts as youve said. Get the tank filled, the material flowing down and the material being expelled. It doesnt require any dynamics.

[DegelmanRD]

When you say without dynamics do you mean without using particles?
I've got too many ideas swirling in my head...let me run this by you:
If I had a simple box shape with a hole near the bottom on one side, could I use a rotating object near the hole to push the particles out the hole?

[evenflcw]

LW, maya, softimage, 3dsmax, houdini are visual effects packages. They provide ways to create spectacular visual effects and animation. Artist do not use them to model reality. They use them to create something that looks like reality. Ie, it doesn't have to work like in reality, only to look like it.

By no dynamics, they probably mean no actual physics simulation. Ie you make it look like a pile of manure is decreasing in size all the while you make something that looks like pieces of manure shoot out of the back. You would still use particlefx to shoot the manure out of the back, but the particles would not be taken from an existing pile of particles, but actually be created right infront of or inside the rotating mechanism. To fake the look of them being taken from the pile, you just decrease the size of the pile. Visual effects, not reality simulation. Looks the same (if you're good), but isn't.

So, do you just need it to look like one of those machines in action, or do you need hard data whether your concept acctually works or not?

[SplineGod]

You can parent particle emitters to the parts of the machien that spray out the manure. Each of the other parts can be done using endomorphs etc.

[RebelHill]

Sounds to me like what ur after is simulating the outcome of the mechanics... a virtual prototype... in which case LW is definately the WRONG package for the job, as, really are all the main 3d graphics packages... although they feature phyics "sims"... its not real physics modelling of the type you're thinking of.

You need to be looking at the types of software engineers use to test deisgns, not graphics apps.