[Maya] nDynamics sim rig to joints issue

xChris

Hey ya'll, I'm trying to do a simulation with nDynamics with a prop exploding, and rigging it up to bake the sim and import into unreal, but I'm having issues getting the joints to follow along with the simulation. I tried the older dynamics in maya, and redid the rigging, and it seems to attach fine, but maya runs real slow when doing the simulations in dynamics vs doing faster/more accurate sims in nDyanmics.  Is there a different workflow I should be doing to get nDynamics rigged/attached to joints? 

I'm currently doing a parent constraint from the mesh to joint, when I run the simulation in nDynamics, the mesh moves, but the joints behave as if they never got attached to anything. Any help would be greatly appreciated! 

Here is one of the older threads I riffed off of for the workflow, there was another one which I'll edit/add here once I find the link:

http://polycount.com/discussion/78827/bake-simulation-to-joints-maya/p1

fmnoor

I haven't used the nDynamics sims yet, but have you tried creating a proxy mesh - parenting it to the rigid bodies (I'm assuming you're using rigid bodies) and then constraining the joints to the proxy mesh? Could you give an example of what you're trying to achieve perhaps?

I was able to parent constaint joints to rigid bodies in Maya 2016 just fine, so I'm not sure what issue you're having unless you're using particle instances?

xChris

Hey @FMNOOR , thanks for the response. I haven't tried using a proxy mesh yet, I'll give that a try and bump the thread with an update. What I was trying to achieve was a rock bursting through a wood panel. I modeled the breaks into the wood panel, so that I can hard weight the pieces to their own joints, so before the rock hits the panel, the panel looks like its an unbroken state. 

I'm not using any particle instances. While I was doing this I was going back and forth between maya 2014 and 2015 to try and get this to work, perhaps there was an update to 2016 with nDynamics, so I'll give it a try! 

fmnoor

" so that I can hard weight the pieces to their own joints, " are you talking about the parent constraint weighting or actually binding the joints to the mesh? When I used to do it I literally just did a parent constraint, and I guess orient constraint and then ran the sim. The joints then drove another set of meshes entirely (lower res - ingame ready ones)

xChris

I meant binding them after you parent constrain/bake the simulation. The way I was doing it was parent constraint > bake the simulation (bone that's following the mesh) > turn off the sim > than now since the  anim is baked to the bone I bind each piece to its own bone.