[Bf-committers] Ridged bodies

[Knapp]

Sergof, I was sent this and thought it might be useful to you. I could not
find a better way to contact you so posted it here. Hope it is useful.

Andy Sellers
<https://www.facebook.com/andrew.m90.sellers?fref=gc&dti=2207257375> I did
a project with Rigid Bodies a while back, and found a few things that could
be improved. 1.There is no way to get an over-view of constraint hierarchy,
to see which objects are controlled by other (sometimes multiple) objects,
which then control still others. This makes debugging a complex simulation
difficult, when getting just one constraint property wrong, among hundreds,
can cause the simulation to explode. 2.Many of the physical properties
don't use standard units, or in some cases the manual just doesn't go into
much detail on what they mean. (Friction, Bounciness, Damping, Impulse,
Spring Stiffness. These properties seem to just use arbitrary values, and
it took quite a bit of trial and error to find the right ones.) 3.General
improvements to the documentation and tooltips would be very helpful. (I'm
pointing a finger at myself here, because I could help with this.) 4.The UI
for Rigid Bodies in both 2.7 and 2.8 could be better organized. Currently,
there is quite a bit of jumping around to change this or that property. I
expect the planned Node-Based Physics will improve this. 5.This would be an
entirely new feature; a graph to visualize various
forces/speed/acceleration acting on objects in the simulation over time.
For example, you could have an object start the simulation in the air,
free-fall to a sloped ground, and then start to roll. The graph would show
how much force gravity had on the object when it started to fall, a sudden
spike when it collides with the ground, and then increasing centrifugal
force as it begins to roll down the slope. Blender already has all this
information; 1 data-point for every step in the simulation. Putting all
that in a graph where the user can see the raw data would be very useful
for error checking when the simulation goes haywire, or for building a
simulation that meets pre-defined force/speed/acceleration goals.

OP on facebook Blender

-- 
Douglas E Knapp, MSAOM, LAc.