[Bf-committers] Drop to ground mod idea

[Knapp]

I keep finding cases were I need a stack modifier that drops something
to the ground.
Examples of this are:

A big group of trees that are in the dirt but the dirt is done with a
cloud texture into a displacement mod. Getting each tree to the right
place is a real pain. Then you adjust the cloud text and have to do it
all over again.

A boat on dynamic or ocean sim water. How do you get it to float with
the waves in an animation? With ocean sim you don't even have an
animated mesh to parent to. Being able to drop a vert to the water
surface would be great. In the case of a big ship you might even want
to drop 4 points on the ship to the water surface and not just a point
of the surface but an average of the surface in an area under the
boat.

A car driving over rough ground in a film. Also a real pain to do but
a drop to mesh surface would be great! Perhaps for each wheel.

Mod options:
to surface or plane or coordinate like +100 X.
Surface as defined by a vert, surface point or an averaged area
Direction (a vector?) to fall.
Depth of penetration into surface.
What is doing the touching, IE a point from the object or an offset
from origin or the lowest surface etc.
Perhaps some way to make the 4 points of a car that touch change the
rotation of the object with possible locking of axis (plural form?).

Possible problems is that it is heading into the direction of physics
and might need more data, for example over time, than is easy to
implement. Even with these limits I would find it useful even as a
simple drop to point along an axis but much better as drop to surface.

I am sure something like this must exist for the BGE but I want it for
film and still picture making.

I found this script.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.5/Py/Scripts/Object/Drop_to_ground

Is there anything else that I might have missed or another way to do this?

-- 
Douglas E Knapp

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