@gidon yuval said:

Chris hi,
I tried adding the hinges where-ever they appear in the model and I tried adding sliders to the connecting rods but nothing moved.

Post what you have and Ill take a look.

Chris

That looks like it would be pretty easy. You would have to separate the wings and add 5 or 6 hinge joints to make it move.

Chris

@masta squidge said:

I think i downloaded the wrong one... The only link I found seems to have no mention of any sort of new cool things. This (the one i downloaded) seems to be the same as what I had before.

Can anyone lend a hand?

New version is still a month or so away.

I am writing a tool that needs the middle mouse button but I am having trouble getting it to work.

The left mouse buttons all seem to work fine but onMButtonDown and onMButtonDoubleClick are never called and onMButtonUp is only called after a double click.

Has anyone got this to work. Is this a known bug?

Chris

@forcemaster2000 said:

Thanks for the quick reply Chris!

Here's what I've got so far, I haven't moved on with it, since I keep running into this problem. I can attach the hinge to the platform, I then group the two wheels with the hinge. I can then attach the two ball joints to the wheels...then my problem starts. When I try to get the two "poles" attached to the ball joints, the wheels and hinge become unglued from the platform. No approach I've attempted has yet to work. Greatly appreciate the help on this!

The problem is the joints are grouped with the wheels. Open the wheel group and explode both the wheels. SP can only "see" one group deep.

BTW balljoints are not very stable. You are almost always better off with a hinge.

Chris

mywalker2.skp

@jim said:

Is there a plugin to select only geometry that can be seen on the screen?

Edit: Including the backfaces. Maybe select visible is a bad description. How about select all within the field of view?

Cant you just use select and drag across the whole window? That does the same thing.

@baker518 said:

I have been studying some of the models that have been animated with SP. They are great indeed, but it would be nice if someone would elaborate a bit on the overall functions. I have drawn a nutcracker that I would like to animate, but I have some questions.

1. I find that I am having to scale down the joints to fit my model. Is this standard or an I doing something wrong?

The size of the joints don't matter. BUT if you make objects too small they wont move.

@baker518 said:

2. Does the hinge direction make a difference?

The joint needs to be positioned where you want the object to pivot. But joints can turn clockwise or counterclockwise. Does that answer the question?

@baker518 said:

3. Is a floor necessary?

Usually things will just fall forever without a floor.

@baker518 said:

4. Do primitives have to in the scene somewhere?

No. SP will assume any group is a box unless you tell it otherwise.

If I wanted to make a nutcracker here is what I would do.
1.Create a floor.
2.Create the body part of the nutcracker (below the jaws) and set it to "convex".
3.Create each cheek (the parts next to the jaw) and set to "convex"
4.Create the top of the head (the parts above the jaw). Set to convex.
5.Group the body, the cheeks and the top of the head. This will make the nutcracker body with a hole through it for the jaws.
6.Create the jaws. Probably out of 2 or more boxes.
7.Create a hinge where you want the jaw to pivot.
8.Set the hinge properties Min and Max to keep the hinge from spinning too far.
9.Group the jaw pieces and the hinge.
10.Use the JointConnection Tool to connect the jaw hinge to the body.

That should work.

Yeah, joint hierarchies are confusing. I have trouble with them too. I hope to make them easier in the next version.

From your description I cant tell exactly what is wrong. Can you post your model?

Chris

@forcemaster2000 said:

Hi! New to these forums. I recently discovered sketchyphysics and while I've gotten simple things to work like a wheeled car or a piston, I'm having trouble figuring out how to connect more complicated systems. While I can attach a wheel to a platform using a hinge, when i try and attach a bar to the wheel using a ball joint, it causes the hinge to detach from the platform! Etc. etc. etc...Is there a heiarchy that I'm not understanding to how joints are attached to components, and components are grouped together? Can anyone please explain this to me.

Much appreciation, Forcemaster2000

I have gotten good results with both Fraps and CamStudio. All my youtube videos are done with them.

SketchyPhysics did have some animation support at one point. Check out this video.

Note the fancy camera work. And it does a rewind at the end.

I have been working on adding "forces" this week. A force can act like (among other things) a magnet or a bomb. Here are a few Youtube videos where I use a magnet force to make planets and asteroids collide.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPqQtwdYrxE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebw1iEtrmtQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC6gQxbHSqo

(CPhillips)

Ah, much better. Yeah I was still using the old one.

I didn't even know this subsection of the forums was here until yesterday.

As far as detecting the window close message. It wouldn't be easy. One thing you could do is just check the position of the window ever 10 sec or so and see if it has moved/closed.

Regards
Chris

Hi Jim,

I love this toolbar. I use it constantly.

Feature request: How about saving the state and position of the console in the registry? So if I close and reopen Sketchup it remembers if the console was open and where it was.

Also If you want I could give you the code to read the console log window. Saving is the only use I can think of. But maybe it could be parsed to some effect.

Chris

I have been working on a new version of SketchyPhysics. Its still a few weeks away but I wanted to show off one new feature "controllable joints".

The new joints are Servo, Piston and Motor. Each can be controlled by a slider or joystick.

I uploaded a few videos to youtube:
Posing a car with sliders
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xay-Gu9lxGc

Demonstration of Servo and Piston. Note the adjustable springiness.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jp2t_ogFvfI

Here is a 3 wheeled RC vehicle that uses joystick for control.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJI4zWbnKx0

CPhillips

@masta squidge said:

Thats why I mentioned the idea of making a "Mesh" option to go along with static mesh. While Static Mesh is, well, static, Mesh would not be static.

Ah. I didn't write the physics engine (Newton). I just wrote the part that connects it to Sketchup. Newton doesn't support dynamic meshes to keep it fast.

Sorry, I just noticed this post.

The problem with "static mesh" objects is they can't move. That is why all the other shapes exist. The closest to what you suggest is "convex hull". But it isnt perfect and a lot slower.

I fixed the ctrl-z problem in the next version due in the fall. Ill look into the other bug.

As for tutorials: I haven't updated the ones on the website because most people are posting models to 3dwarehouse.
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/search?q=sketchyphysics&styp=m&scoring=d

You can also ask for help in the SketchyPhysics forums:
http://groups.google.com/group/sketchyphysics/topics

Chris

@masta squidge said:

If the "staticmesh" creates an object that followed the actual geometry of whatever it is, wouldnt it make sense simply to make all objects mesh objects though not static?

wouldnt that do away with all the work of having to change each item, and fix the problem with making a closed torus into nothing more than a cylinder from the viewpoint of the program?

Im sure there is a reason for it, but wouldnt it be easier to work with if all object were made as "mesh" objects that follow the geometry of the item, then you would only need to assign static, frozen, or ignore values to each item.

Also, as was posted before, pressing "Ctrl-Z" while in a simulation causes objects to "explode" and move around the scene. Its not easy to fix.

AND, sometimes when i make a floor when the "default" scene is acticve, then delete the default floor to play with the four objects, after they go out of the boundary of the default scene floor, they drop through the newly placed floor (yes its a solid object) while items i have made have no trouble with it at all.

All in all, very nice work.

Oh, and by the way:

Hi guys!! Im new here (obviously) and am currently in the process of being miserable with this plugin, and the two videos i have seen on it dont teach me anything more than how to place a hinge and stack up objects during a simulation.

If anyone would like to perhaps give me a hand with this, i would be grateful, as any "tutorials" that i find dont really teach me anything.

That picture is almost unreadable. But I think the problem is you don't have the files in the right place. Follow the instructions here:
http://code.google.com/p/sketchyphysics/wiki/LatestVersion

@unknownuser said:

Hey Chris, where can I download SketchySolids Toolbar and how do I drag objects? I ot a LOT of trouble with that.

SketchySolids is part of SketchyPhysics.

There are instructions and a tutorial on dragging on the homepage:

Google Code Archive - Long-term storage for Google Code Project Hosting.

(code.google.com)

@namza said:

ping pong machine

Very nice! It looks as cool as it works.

You should upload to 3d warehouse(use sketchyphysics tag).

Chris

@ampa said:

I was looking at giantmonster.tv today, and wondered whether one could use SketchyPhysics as an easy rigging tool for SU?

The code already exists to define joints between different objects, along with movement tollerences (max and min) so by turning off gravity a rag-doll becomes a posable-doll.

What do you think?
Ampa

Possible in theory. But it would require some fairly big changes to the non-ruby code.

So I had a look at the SketchyPhysics options… turning off Gravity is easy to do; but I was unclear about what the other options did…

Density: presumably affects the mass of objects when they collide.

@ampa said:

Yes. It isnt much use now. It will be important in future versions.

@ampa said:

Framerate: defines the amount of discrete time that passes during each itteration?
Ampa

Yes. 1 is the minimum. Higher numbers will appear to go faster but wont be as smooth.

@ampa said:

Worldscale: er - no idea
Ampa

This is how big the world is. Use bigger numbers to increase the size of the world.

@ampa said:

I was trying to recreate space - ie no gravity or friction, but couldn't find a way. My objects always slow down, as if through air resistance. Is this possible?
Ampa

There inst any air friction that I know of. I am not sure why your objects would slow down in zero g.

Chris

"Google Guy" has an example.

Error 404 (Not Found)!!1

(sketchup.google.com)