Softbody character parts

[fritzmonkey]

I created a character for testing partial soft body skeletal meshes and I'm running in to some issues. The soft body parts are just dropping to the ground and don't seem to be effected by the rest of the skeletal mesh. Anyone know how to fix this?

[micahpharoh]

Make sure you set up the physics assets correctly. Also, make sure you set it up correctly in your modeling program. I personally don't have much experience in this, but maybe look at the soft body physx tutorials and see if you notice anything.

PhysX tuts (http://developer.nvidia.com/object/physx_modkit.html)

Maybe I'm incorrectly interpreting on your problem, though.

[fritzmonkey]

I don't see anything there relating to soft body physics there. Soft boy is one of the new features of UDK so it isn't going to be in any UT3 tutorials. I found a little more information on what I'm trying to do in UDN. I have the bones set as special soft body bones, and before I didn't have a physics actor set up for the skeletal mesh. I set one up and now the soft body section of the mesh isn't doing anything.

[geodav]

tick the always animate box for each bone in the physics assest, you may also need to add the bone names to the mesh properties

a lot depends on what you mean by soft bodys

[fritzmonkey]

That actually helped some. The soft body sections are partially working. They interact with other objects, but they also freak out and aren't behaving as expected. I'll have to do more testing with a less complicated mesh. Thanks for the help.

You can see an example of what I mean by soft bodies in this video. The meat cube is a soft body.

http://ve3d.ign.com/videos/22399/Xbox-360/Gears-of-War-2/Developer-Diary/Unreal-Engine-3-Enhancements-Movie

[geodav]

yeh i remember see-ing that video last year, sorry i can't help on that as i've never had anything like that in the editor

[fritzmonkey]

It isn't hard to set up a simple cube or sphere like they show in the video, but getting just part of an object to be soft body seems to take some extra steps that I can't seem to find.

[Number47]

Could you post a guide to what you have done so far, and maybe we can try it ourselves and come up with a solution. I personally think it would be way cool to parts of a character to behave as a soft body.

[eAlex79]

There is somebody here with a link to his/her blog in the signature where he/she/it :p published a text how to get that working. I don't have the link at hand and I don't find it right now either, search for that.

[Hitpawz]

Make sure interpentrating collision objects aren't colliding with each other. Select the object and the interpenetrators should be grey, not purple.

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/VideoTutorials.html (physics assets)

[Number47]

Try this link:
http://okita.com/alex/?p=494

He got it working!

[tegleg]

sorry for digging up this old thread but did you ever get it working?
i cant get the softbody bit to stop dropping to the floor.
what settings need setting?

cheers

[Bozor]

You must have 2 bones (at least...) :
- bones_soft
- bone_special

Skin the vertex you want to be soft body to the bone_soft bone and you have to link some vertex to the special bone. In editor, you can set the special bone to "fixed" and the soft part of your mesh stop to drop down on floor.

[AlbinoWarrior]

Ok, I had basically the same trouble with this. So, using a bicep as an example, I would have a bone in the bicep with the arm bone as its parent, then use that as the soft body, not the arm bone itself, and obviously the bicep verts would be weighted to the new bone, not any that actually animate... Right?

Also I had a weird issue with soft body parts looking kind glossy, anyone else have this?

[Bozor]

I don't exactly understand your bicep story but there's the link who saved me when I had this problem :
http://okita.com/alex/?p=494

You must weight some vertex with the fixed bone. I think that your arm bone can be the "fixed one". Don't forget to put your mesh in the scene to test it... If you look at it in the animset windows, the soft part of your mesh will not be at the right place but it's working great in a level.

[tegleg]

i followed that link Bozor, couldnt get the 'special' fixed bone to work, it drops to the floor whatever i try.
the number it goes on about that you put in the code, whats that do?