Reactor

Today we had a recap on the reactor tool. This will be useful for me as I am in charge of explosions, so if any bombs are going to be dropped and cause collisions with buildings then this tool will be a good starting point for this, although more research will need to be done in the next week when the models are finished.

Firstly, playing about with the mass, elasticity, friction etc. properties and just getting re-familiar with the reactor area was done. I quickly remembered the settings and how to use the reactor after the demonstration. Pressing 'p' to play the animation and 'r' to reset it showed how the animation turned out.

Next (remembering that the objects should be as close as they can be without touching, as reactor doesn't like that!) a ramp and ball were added to collide with objects. Once again the properties needed to be added, as well as the collision tolerance being lowered as far down as it could go so that the boxes don't bounce about everywhere.

The final part involved no ramp, but the autokey and basic animation with the ball. The important thing to remember here was to change the start frame with the timing from 0 to a number that is after the animation begins. From this lesson, I am going to start reading up/watching youtube videos to do with creating effective looking explosions and destroying buildings, as I have a feeling that this part might be tricky to do.

We also learnt how to create water, which was a lot easier than I expected. Using the reactor again, there was a special section for water. A plane was then added as well as a sphere, then the settings were adjusted so that ripples etc. appeared. Although I am not in charge of creating the water for our scene it is still a handy skill to have.