(July 6, 2015 at 8:45 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Understand that Unity uses NVidia's PhysX engine, which includes gravity, friction, rotational momentum etc. already built in.
Cool. I hoped that would be the case - that all obvious physics effects would be built in and just essentially tweakable.
Quote:1) To make the snooker table, you should use blender or maya and just model them. You can probably find a free table mesh online that you can download, but it shouldn't be hard to just make your own.
Looking at those two programs, Maya and Blender, I can't afford Maya and in any case it looks incredibly complicated and used for making very realistic 3D effects for films and suchlike. Blender on the other hand is open source and free so that will have to be my package of choice but I'll still have to learn it, which could take a while because I've never used that sort of software.
The thing about me and programming is I prefer it when the programming environment is essentially self contained, as Unity seems to be and as VB was. It's a flaw I know but I just get overwhelmed if I have to reach far and wide for everything and have to constantly keep learning new technologies and plugins. I just can't do it, just can't keep up. That's why I'm no good at Web Development - because your average webpage requires so many different technologies working together and those technologies are always changing. But I need to learn that aspect as well here so although my tendency would be to try and do everything myself with the tools I'm familiar with, which in this case will be Unity, Blender, and anything else you recommend, I really need to be able to work outside the box as well and that means getting assets from varied sources. So in other words I'd like to make the table myself but I think I should also try and find one elsewhere just so I know I can.
Quote:2) If you put a bunch of balls with Rigidbody components, then the basic physics is already taken care of, no programming or additional calculation required. Right now, you can go do this in literally 1 minute.
3) The reason they don't bounce is that you are probably still applying your force, which is identical to the bounce velocity, i.e. just let go of the controls, and the ball should bounce. Or see #4.
4) You can create a "Physics Material" which will set the bounciness, friction, and some other things of an objects material. Zero friction is fun, and is how I got my ball to move through the slide without getting stuck due to friction.
Thanks, I'll bear all this in mind when I come to it. But for 3) it doesn't bounce even when you're not using the controls, but I'm sure that's easily solved as you say.
Quote:5) Yep, you can do this, too. That's why if you look at my demo game, the Earth is rotating-- I'm applying a horizontal force, and it automatically starts rotating due to friction from the floor. You can also set the center of gravity to affect how the rotation works.
Making some balls bounce on a virtual table should be easy. Getting it to properly match the physics of a real table and balls will be almost impossible, I'm guessing. But just because it's not a perfect physical simulation doesn't mean it won't be a fun game, and good enough to convince non-pros.
Yes I was thinking about that. It's a long way off I know but I wouldn't mind there being some sort of training mode in my game with markings on the cue ball so that you can see the effects of spin. And that also reminded me that most of the time the cue ball is moving it's actually just skimming the surface of the table rather than rolling as it does in the Roll a Ball project. In other words it is spinning one way, dependent on what type of shot you've played, but it is moving another until a certain point when the spin takes over and starts to affect its path. That will be another interesting aspect to try and model.
Anyway I know I'll never be able to get it perfect but I think it will be a lot of fun trying
