Cineversity

Sometimes C4D dynamics can baffle me.
The way I understand gravity, the little “car” should just start rolling and accelerate when I start the animation/simulation.
However, it makes several attempts and bounces back before it finally gets going, as if it had to overcome some invisible force.
It seems to me that it behaves a little bit as if it had a motor, trying to accelerate uphill, failing, increasing the torque, trying again, etc ... until it finally succeeds.
There is an invisible floor in the scene.
If I copy the Dynamics Body Tag which stops it from falling through the sloping plane onto the floor, then it all works as I would expect.

What am I missing?? Dark Energy is not supposed to have a measurable effect on such small scales ....

cheers, thanks
Günther

Hi Günther,

Here is your file back.

Note that I have reduced it a little bit.

The “Dynamic Tag> Attribute Manager> Collision> Shape> Box/Moving Mesh” was set.

Think of the Automatic most of the time as an sphere like shape which tries to cover the object. In any case except a sphere like, this will increase the size. In most cases it will interfere with close objects. Friction at least or even explode the whole scene.

The size of the Cube left/right was set smaller. to really avoid the friction. I went rough here, you might fine-tune it.

I have reduced the Connectors from four to two. I see no reason to have four in it. In 3D we need only the amount that makes it work, not what reality would need.

One cube can run as a Constrain>Parent, no need to calculate (dyn.) this for each frame as well.

The Bounce for the wheels was reduced, since the plane is smooth, I see no reason to keep this high. (But this is certainly more gut-feeling than technical concern.)

All the best

Your file:
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/ZZTxdWcVvX28WcKVxcRZq5OOZ0Gbir0Gmw9fuTM8q5N?ref_=cd_ph_share_link_copy

Thank you for this - so much to learn after many years of doing other things. I left almost everything at the defaults for now, and I shall study your changes carefully.
Years ago in C4D XL I would have done this with a calculator, key frames and f-curves and taken hours ... wishing now I could have R18 with the old cool icons and interface ...

thanks again
Günther

Thanks for the feedback, Günther.

I remember vividly when the Module Dynamics came out [2001]. I certainly have’t look back a single second after the new dynamics where implemented.

Being able to do it manually is often a good skill to have. Dynamics are great and easy to use these days, but they don’t like to listen to an art director’s vision all the time. Manual solution do. So, keep your skills fresh. ;o)

The icons, I guess in a few month the old icons will look ancient to you, if you work a lot with the new. (I just had this week “LifeForms 4” open to harvest some “bvh” files, that was a shock… seeing this decade old interface)

My best wises.

P.S.: perhaps this is useful to explore as well…
https://www.cineversity.com/forums/viewthread/2083/