The Rigid Body Simulation (New for 5)

When simulating Rigid body physics animations, please follow the steps below:

  1. Select a prop or an accessory. You are allowed to select multiple objects in order to assign the same physics setting to all of them.
  2. Activate their physics by clicking the Physics Settings (Shortcut: Shift + F9), and enabling the Active Physics option in the Rigid Body tab.

    Please refer to the links below for more information about parameters in the Physics Object Settings panel.

  3. The selected object assigned with the physics settings will be surrounded with red wireframes (known as bounding) when the Physics Object Settings panel is opened.
  4. Turn on Rigid Body Simulation by clicking the corresponding button on the right-side of the Tool bar. Please note that if you wish to simulate animations of rigid body objects, then you must press down on this button.
  5. It is highly suggested that you switch to By Frame mode for each simulation. You may do this by clicking the Play Mode Switch (Shortcut: F9) button.
  6. Click the Play button (Shortcut: Space bar) to start the simulation. The simulation results of all rigid bodies (Kinematic object is excluded) will be stored in their Animation tracks.

    All free-falling objects will be continuously dropping during simulation unless you have added a physics floor to hold them before the simulation.

  7. You may go to the same start frame where you wish to simulate the physics animations, then click the play button to simulate continuously until you are satisfied with the results.
  8. Turn off the Rigid Body Simulation (Shortcut: Shift + F9) so that next time you click the play button, the simulation stops. The last animations will be kept unless you turn on the Rigid Body Simulation again.
  9. Once the simulation is finished, you may then switch to Realtime mode in order to view the results in regular playback speed.

Rigid Body and Regular Prop

Once an object is designated with physics settings, it will then recognize and interact with other objects that are also assigned with physics settings.

In the next illustrations, the red props are rigid bodies and the white one is a regular prop.

Rigid Body: The ball and the cone.

Regular Prop: The cube and the floor.

The ball does not recognize the cube.

It penetrates the cube.

The ball recognizes the cone.

It hits the cone and the cone bounces off.