Settings
If this option is enabled, the tool will try to always maintain the object's initial orientation If disabled, the orientation will adapt accordingly during a collision and will then remain unchanged. If you have a look at the above: In the first case, the pen would fall vertically after passing the obstacle; in the second case it would remain at an angle - when the LMB is released, the handle object will adapt with regard to orientation.
Here you can define how multiple selected objects will behave when a rotation handle is dragged on the handle object:
- Both: The individual objects will rotate around the common center point of the handle object, as if the normal Rotation tool were used.
- Group: Individual objects will rotate around the common center point of the handle object but will maintain their original orientation (like gondolas on a ferris wheel).
- Object: Individual objects will rotate around their own center point.
This option has no effect if Preserve Orientation is disabled.
Physical systems can react strangely if the size ratios in the scene are not clear. You should therefor define an approximate scale factor for the object to be placed. If, for example, it's 30 cm big you can always select the nearest value: here it would be 0.1m. The physical simulation will then work better.
(missing or bad snippet)This vector can be used to define a gravitational direction and strength. The default value of -9.81 for Y reflect the Earth's gravitational force.
The gravitational force takes effect when you let objects fall or throw them when you click on the above button. The greater the gravitational force, the greater the velocity with which the objects accelerate in that direction will be.
As you might recall from physics class in school, you have to differentiate between two types of friction:
- Stick Friction: Friction that takes place between two touching objects at rest: or at the point when a cube lying on a slope starts to slide.
- Movement Friction: Friction that takes place between two moving objects: or the velocity with which a sliding cube moves down a slope.
During placement, these settings primarily affect collision effects. How, for example, should a handful of rounded cubes behave if they move across a given surface: the greater the Stick Friction, the slower they will roll over their corners and edges.
Stick Friction works better for falling objects and when larger surfaces rub against each other.
To be physically correct, the Movement Friction cannot be greater than the Stick Friction.
These settings are used for collisions and they define the elasticity with which the objects will behave with regard to rebounding. If the value is set to 0, the objects will behave like chewing gum (but without deformation): they will stay together upon contact; the greater the Bounciness value, the greater the rebounding effect between objects will be.
The collision geometry mentioned in the following two settings can be made visible by enabling this option. Selected objects, i.e., those to be placed, will be colored blue, other objects red. You will notice that the collision geometry is often only an approximation of the correct geometry: some objects will be recreated using numerous individual geometries, a layer will turn into a flat quad, etc. This is more than enough for most collisions!
Note that for complex scenes it can take a moment until all collision geometries have been created.
For collisions, simplified collision geometries will be created internally in order to increase calculation speed. You will notice that, if you let a very round sphere fall onto a plane, it will behave like a facetted sphere. You can enable the Visualize Colliders option to make the collision geometry visible.
The resolution of this collision geometry can be defined using the Accuracy setting. The higher the value, the more precisely the collision geometry will resample the original object's shape (the calculation speed will be reduced accordingly) and vice-versa. Hence, if you notice that your collisions are too imprecise, you can increase this value to improve the results.
If very small values are used you can end up losing detail.
This setting is for dealing with objects that have numerous Child objects. If the Parent object is selected, a common collision geometry will be created for it and all of its Child objects (if on the other hand you only have the Child objects selected, the Grouping function will have no effect). The smaller this value is, the more precisely the collision geometry will resample the original mesh and the more precise the collision process will be (with correspondingly longer calculation times) and vice-versa. If very high values are used, it can happen that a comparatively small object can end up being ignored.
You can enable the Visualize Colliders option to make the collision geometry visible.