Rube Goldberg scenario

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Rube Goldberg scenario // The Garage

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Post by Norm // Jun 28, 2007, 5:23am

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Just curious if anyone was interested in starting an ongoing project dedicated to Rube. General idea is to create mechanizms that run in trueSpace physics. We could then come up with a collection of items that we could use for a competition of some sort. Have say an assortment of 20 mechanizms that contestants can use to build a machine. Everyone starts out with same "package" and we get to see what comes of it:)

Should probably have a standard size that these mechanizms should be. In grid units I mean. Not too big and not too small.

Post by frootee // Jun 28, 2007, 5:27am

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COOL!


Ha Ha... Ongoing.... that's definitely.. Rube ! :p


I would be interested. The track generator script that someone else developed would be a good thing to add I think. Maybe one of those drinking ducks that tilt when the fluid in their ball rises due to heat...


Frootee

Post by 3dvisuals dude // Jun 28, 2007, 5:33am

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Great idea! I'm game!

Maybe it will indirectly help me over the hump I'm at with my Elevator Project too, since It'll be a while before I can get your two scripting tutorials anyway (funds are very tight at the moment).

Sounds like lots of fun! :D

- 3dvisuals dude

Post by 3dvisuals dude // Jun 28, 2007, 5:42am

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COOL!

Ha Ha... Ongoing.... that's definitely.. Rube ! :p

I would be interested. The track generator script that someone else developed would be a good thing to add I think. Maybe one of those drinking ducks that tilt when the fluid in their ball rises due to heat...

Frootee

Glad you jumped in Frootee!

The Track Generator was Professorkhaos... truly amazing work too.

I had an idea for an unprecedented type of physics-based realworld sculpture many years ago.... could be possible to do that now within TS7.51. Then there's my Minisub project I haven't started yet.... hmmm. ;)

Do you have a list of machine types in mind already Norm?

- 3dvisuals dude

Post by 3dvisuals dude // Jun 28, 2007, 8:04am

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Just curious if anyone was interested in starting an ongoing project dedicated to Rube. General idea is to create mechanizms that run in trueSpace physics. We could then come up with a collection of items that we could use for a competition of some sort. Have say an assortment of 20 mechanizms that contestants can use to build a machine. Everyone starts out with same "package" and we get to see what comes of it:)

Should probably have a standard size that these mechanizms should be. In grid units I mean. Not too big and not too small.

OK Norm,

I went Googling for "Rube Goldberg Machines" and now I understand what you're talking about much more clearly.... this will DEFINITELY be a blast to be part of! Great idea for sure!!! :D

Here's a link for anybody else like me who didn't know what a "Rube Goldberg Machine" is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rube_Goldberg_machine

This will be a lotta laughs as well as a good TS Physics Education! :banana:

- 3dvisuals dude

Post by Norm // Jun 28, 2007, 8:57am

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I never had any specific ideas really. Just a general thought about ongoing ts-inventions for such machines.

I figure we might want a set size for the machine-components. Say a 2x2x2 grid size for the parts. That way they would "fit" together easier. Folks may have to create their own machine parts when it comes time to create full machines, but having assortment of ready made components would be useful.

What would max machine size be? 8'cubed (8 grid units in all directions: xyz)? 16'cubed? 32'cubed?

So for most part I wanted to get the ball rolling and see if anyone was interested.

One twist I felt would be scripting capabilites. We could have an assortment of different script objects to do diff things: motor spins 360 degrees, pendulum swings every 3 seconds ... that sort of thing would be interesting.

Sky should be the limit :)

Some great imaginations here so I figure why not see if we can come up with something fun to do over the long run.

To get the ball rolling perhaps we could start things off with a simple sphere/marble type focus. Build parts that would work with a simple sphere shape.
Anyone want to create a marble :)

Post by 3dvisuals dude // Jun 28, 2007, 12:20pm

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To get the ball rolling perhaps we could start things off with a simple sphere/marble type focus. Build parts that would work with a simple sphere shape.
Anyone want to create a marble :)

Wow that's one small marble! I'm used to huge objects by comparison!

I'm not really sure what you mean by "create a marble," but since you already created the marble object above I just loaded it and added a customized DX9 texture to make it look more like a real marble.

I have no idea what the actual physics characteristics are of a real marble though, if that's what you meant by "create," so I hope this will do for starters! :confused:

Note that I used a fairly large texture which I can make smaller if you guys want to actually go with this texture at all, and that will reduce the filesize a lot of course, so just let me know. Anyhow, here's what it looks like anyway followed by the modified rsobj file.

- 3dvisuals dude

Post by Burnart // Jun 28, 2007, 1:02pm

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Norm this sounds like a good idea to me - it could end up being a very educative package of bolt on bits for building and learning animation techniques in tS. As I'm someone who is really pretty ignorant of all this stuff in 7.5 I'll participate if I can but I think I need to see some more advanced hands set the ball (or marble!) rolling so I get a better idea of how I can contribute.

Post by 3dvisuals dude // Jun 28, 2007, 1:42pm

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Welcome aboard Burnart!http://www.addis-welt.de/smilie/smilie/autoboat/mat.gif

This will be a ton of fun!

- 3dvisuals dude

Post by ProfessorKhaos // Jun 28, 2007, 3:21pm

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Cool idea Norm and quite practical in the current state of trueSpace :)


Track maker script was written in python for use with mesher but I see little reason why it couldn't be adapted using VBscript or jscript since we've got easy access to mesh info inherent in objects.

Post by Norm // Jun 28, 2007, 7:20pm

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Wow that's one small marble! I'm used to huge objects by comparison! - 3dvisuals dude

Well this is the question I suppose. What type of scale should we use. I created a .05 meter sized sphere and gave it Iron properties. We will have to keep an eye on file sizes so it doesn't balloon too much :)

Post by Norm // Jun 28, 2007, 7:24pm

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Norm this sounds like a good idea to me - it could end up being a very educative package of bolt on bits for building and learning animation techniques in tS. As I'm someone who is really pretty ignorant of all this stuff in 7.5 I'll participate if I can but I think I need to see some more advanced hands set the ball (or marble!) rolling so I get a better idea of how I can contribute.

Yes will be easy items to start with. I will see if I can come up with something over weekend as a start. We could always scale something if everything is built to same standards for size and such. Once we get a few examples, the scenario should begin to make more sense and hopefully others will participate as well.

Do some research for Rube Goldberg on google or such and investigate what is out there. Excellent ideas and such when you spend some time researching. Is a most interesting topic.

Post by Norm // Jun 28, 2007, 7:26pm

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Cool idea Norm and quite practical in the current state of trueSpace :)

Track maker script was written in python for use with mesher but I see little reason why it couldn't be adapted using VBscript or jscript since we've got easy access to mesh info inherent in objects.

Cool. I believe scripting will be integral. Gears and such. :)

Post by 3dvisuals dude // Jun 29, 2007, 8:57am

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OK Folks... let the games begin. :banana:

First off, we have a fun crew already here and I'm glad to see you all joining in on this, hopefully many more will join us as they begin to see what fun this really can be and how powerful TS Physics really is now.

@ Norm - Thanks for doing this, it's a truly great idea and will be popular. :)

@ Frootee - Fasten your seatbelts.... :D

@ Burnart - Jump right in, the water's warm! I have no idea what I'm doing with all this stuff either so lets learn it all together you and I. :o

@ ProfessorKhaos - I'm extremely encouraged to see you dropping in here on this with us and really hope you'll have as much fun as I will with it! :D

Now here's what I've been up to last night....

First off, great care was taken in modelling these to make certain the marble will not encounter any geometry bumps whatsoever, additionally all these 12 items fit together perfectly when lined up for use. ;)

This will all need to be scaled when proper scale is truly decided, but I made that easy by making one of the 12 Simple Machines a cube.

The TS7.51 Rsscn File is Zipped below the image for download.

Note that the marbles depicted in the image are in the scene file also for reference but have no physics properties and should be deleted from the scene once a proper marble has been scaled and added to the scene with physics properties. The textures are simple DX9 stuff and the render is in Vray1.51.

Enjoy!

- 3dvisuals dude

Post by 3dvisuals dude // Jun 29, 2007, 10:13am

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Oh yeah... one other little item of interest...

When you take #10 above and mirror it in the Y Axis (Caligari's Z Axis) so that the wheels kind of face each other... it makes a perfect cannon. :D

Did I mention seatbelts? ;)

- 3dvisuals dude

Post by frootee // Jun 29, 2007, 10:18am

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Hey 3dv. How do the wheels in #10 work? Are they constantly rotating at a high velocity?


Frootee

Post by 3dvisuals dude // Jun 29, 2007, 10:22am

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Does anybody have a rolling ballbearing sound file? (wav or mp3) :cool:

Something like the sound of a ball spinning on a roulette wheel would be perfect if it's a long enough soundfile to be edited up for use with this.

- 3dvisuals dude

Post by 3dvisuals dude // Jun 29, 2007, 10:24am

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Hey 3dv. How do the wheels in #10 work? Are they constantly rotating at a high velocity?

Frootee

That's the fun part... we all get to play with the velocity and friction with #10 on a per-track-section basis.

I'm thinking about where to aim the cannon myself! hahahaha! :banana:

- 3dvisuals dude

Post by 3dvisuals dude // Jun 29, 2007, 10:34am

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A great idea to stir your creativity on this is to imagine the craziest high-speed miniature golf course possible, toss in launching golf balls and then think of the funniest moving targets imaginable. :D

- 3dvisuals dude

Post by 3dvisuals dude // Jun 30, 2007, 8:39am

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A little something to think about for a while.;)

TS7.51 Rsscn file zipped for download below image.

- 3dvisuals dude

Post by frootee // Jul 1, 2007, 4:32am

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Here is a Rube item, W.I.P. I realized this morning that the see-saw bar is crooked, so I will rebuild this.


How I did it:

1. Booleaned two cylinders to get the bowl

2. made a copy, rotated 180 degrees

3. booleaned these to a long thin cylinder

note: just joining these 3 items together via 3D encapsulate does not work, since they are still treated as separate entities during physics simulation, so I had to boolean them. Is there a way to do this in Workspace yet?

4. created a fat 'washer' in the seesaw to insert the center balance bars (vertical cylinders)

5. ensured the vertical balance bars were out of the way

6. added 2 Fixation Points, centered about the center of the fat washer

7. added a procedural clip, for each: the sphere, and cylinder

8. generated keyframes

9. turned off procedural clip

10. put vertical balance bars back, centering them in the fat washer. Note that it is important to 'fake' this type of center point by following steps 5 and 6. If 5 and 6 are not done, and the balance bars are in place, then the phys sim is run, lots of friction occurs, and undesirable results are achieved (i.e. it's a P.I.T.A. to try to get it to work so don't even bother :cool: )


Here's the file. Enjoy!

This will be reworked.


Frootee

Post by 3dvisuals dude // Jul 1, 2007, 5:22am

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Awesome Frootee! :banana:

I'm definitely going to be playing with this windmill for a while! Great idea!:D

I know from a recent post of yours that you don't have screengrab capability at the moment so I just added some quick textures to your object you uploaded here and grabbed a screenshot of it for everybody else thinking about joining us in this project. Very nice work with this by the way!

I can see already that as we all get really into this over the next few weeks we'll me making some very fun stuff here together, this is really great!

As for my contribution today... I figured I may have "shocked the powers that be" earlier with that "food for thought" model I posted in here so I made something much more in line with what Norm really had in mind to begin with. Sorry Norm, I couldn't resist! Hahaha!:D

As you can already see in all my downloads here I've made models FOR physics application as opposed to WITH it already applied. This is because I have no clue how (and probably only 10% of the Forum Membership here DOES know how) to create my own physics objects iin the link editor or scripting modules and then save them to the stack. An ~extremely~ simple step-by-step "LE Newbie Tutorial" is desperately needed here on all that stuff not only by me for sure. I'd hazard a guess that that's the primary reason more folks haven't jumped in here already even though they would like to.:o

Anyhow, in the meantime, what I can do, I do. So here's what I made for us all last night to play with.

The TS7.51 Rsscn file is zipped for download below after BOTH images.;)

Enjoy!

- 3dvisuals dude

Post by frootee // Jul 1, 2007, 6:01am

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Thanks 3dv.

I downloaded your scene file. I think it would be easier to work with your objects if they were not all glued together. Each individual component needs to be manipulated, as opposed to the item as a whole.


Thanks!


Frootee

Post by 3dvisuals dude // Jul 1, 2007, 6:22am

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Actually they're not all glued together.

They were imported into modelside via luuv as an obj file, and decomposed into separate parts. The parts that are in fact stuck together are actually boolean unioned parts, while the gears and axles are separate objects with the exception of the main upper axle which must move with the parts it is intentionally booleaned to.

Aside from that if they're "stuck together" go to modelside and unglue them, but that's due to trueSpace not do to the design for sure.

- 3dvisuals dude

Post by frootee // Jul 1, 2007, 7:31am

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Hi 3dv. I think the request I should have posted was, to have the objects unglued already. That would make it easier for others interested in playing with the objects for physics to do so, without having to go through an initial unglue step. While it's not a large effort with this object, since there are not too many parts, it may get to be quite a bit of work if we had a really big object with lots of moving parts that would each have to be unglued.


Thanks,


Cool object BTW!


Frootee

Post by frootee // Jul 1, 2007, 9:04am

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Can't figure out what's happening here. The ends of this thing are wobbling, even though I have 2 fixation points. I am uploading the file. Anybody know why this is happening?


Frootee

Post by 3dvisuals dude // Jul 1, 2007, 10:47pm

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Hi 3dv. I think the request I should have posted was, to have the objects unglued already. That would make it easier for others interested in playing with the objects for physics to do so, without having to go through an initial unglue step. While it's not a large effort with this object, since there are not too many parts, it may get to be quite a bit of work if we had a really big object with lots of moving parts that would each have to be unglued.

Thanks,

Cool object BTW!

Frootee

No sweat. The trueSpace "glue" versus "encapsulate objects in 3d" is confusing to everybody including me. Just read the following post about that and also check out the "UnEncapsulator" download in that same short thread which trueBlue created for TS7.5 as a partial workaround for related Workplace-side issues: http://forums1.caligari.com/truespace/showthread.php?t=3163&highlight=unencapsulator (http://forums1.caligari.com/truespace/showthread.php?t=3163&highlight=unencapsulator)

I often create objects outside trueSpace depending on what specific type of object design is required due to the fact that I have mastered a few other 3d programs over the years but have not mastered trueSpace yet by any means... sometimes it's a lot faster for me to produce certain things outside TS accordingly.

As a consequence of that though, I import OBJ Files into TS with the Luuv Plugin and then use TS's "Decompose Object" to separate the imported object into hierarchical sub objects. Since I usually then apply textures next and position the entire model in relation to both lights and camera, I keep the model within that TS-created Hierarchy during those two steps for convenience and speed.

I sometimes forget to remove the TS-created Hierarchy when finished as my last order of related business, and occasionally I think of it but leave it intact for the convenience of those who similarly use the model widget to quickly position the entire model within the scene once they too have it.

Either way, as you said, unless the model is complex and you need to have quick access to the subparts separately as independent objects, it's no big deal for a recipient of the modelset to "unglue" the (sibling/child) subobjects of the TS-Created Hierarchy in the modelside of TS at their end.

On the other hand, sometimes precisely because a modelset ~is~ highly complex it is also advantageous to leave the TS-created Hierarchy intact to prevent the accidental misalignment of key subparts during the anticipated initial selection and manipulation of the objectset by recipients unfamiliar with the key alignment nuances of that particular objectset.

Kind of a "coinflip" decision really. If I unglued all TS-created hierarchies from all the models I zip for others I would get complaints from the other side of the preference spectrum that for their convenience I should have left it all intact!

The important issue in relation to this (imho) rather trivial one is whether TS will ever have a single key or icon to simply toggle hierarchy on and off for active scenes as well as output files. That would be handy. :cool:

- 3dvisuals dude

Post by 3dvisuals dude // Jul 1, 2007, 10:55pm

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Can't figure out what's happening here. The ends of this thing are wobbling, even though I have 2 fixation points. I am uploading the file. Anybody know why this is happening?

Frootee

Yeah, this is strange in several ways. :confused:

When in motion it looks like the lateral axis of the axle shaft is off vertically... set too high in the world Z as opposed to the correct local z.

I'll look at this harder in the morning, somethings wrong here for sure.

Good start though nevertheless. If I just clearly understood how to link these things I'd be much more able to help I think, but I'll see what I can see on it in a few hours and let you know.

- 3dvisuals dude

Post by frootee // Jul 2, 2007, 1:41am

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well, I tried generating keyframes from physics, then, since the undesirable motion was a translation, I removed the translation keyframes. When I played back the animation, the wobble got worse.
I have 2 fixation points attached; one on each end. Seems like the goal of using two fixation points in this configuration is to hold the object in place, allowing only rotation, but some translation is still occuring.
Maybe I could add a skeleton inside, and set the joints to be 1D (rotary) only.

Frootee

Post by 3dvisuals dude // Jul 2, 2007, 6:04am

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well, I tried generating keyframes from physics, then, since the undesirable motion was a translation, I removed the translation keyframes. When I played back the animation, the wobble got worse.
I have 2 fixation points attached; one on each end. Seems like the goal of using two fixation points in this configuration is to hold the object in place, allowing only rotation, but some translation is still occuring.
Maybe I could add a skeleton inside, and set the joints to be 1D (rotary) only.

Frootee

I doubt this would have anything to do with the off-axis movement of the axleshaft but I suppose it might... when I created that particular shaft the hole that it goes through on each end (through the wooden-textured vertical blocks) was very slightly larger in diameter than the actual shaft. If... the initial generation of keyframes from physics which you made somehow "needed" that shaft to be exactly the same diameter as the shaft retaining holes I suppose a slight wobble would get worse as more keyframes were introduced. Just a thought, but again I doubt it.

In the manual videos from chapter 10 / Physics (which Norm uploaded here to the forums after the manual was ready) there is a scene where a sphere is rotated in place along various axes. I would assume that in the case of that particular sphere either world coordinates for spin axis determination were used or the sphere was spun in place acording to it's object axes. The reason I mention this, is that if the axleshaft were lined up perfectly so that the dead center of the axleshaft (along the length of the shaft) were at a precise known Z and Y axis point identical at both ends, with only an X axis point distinguishable between each end point - before any spin simulation or keyframing is done and both before and after a ball is introduced - we should be able to determine then the exact cause of any variation in altitude as it occurs. Makes sense?

- 3dvisuals dude
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