Pool table animation, problem with balls

[Brian Jones]

you have to change the default settings of the tags (probably Static Mesh is good for the collider, unless it really is moving) bounce might be too high, particularly on the table. The help has a good section in Manual/Reference/CINEMA 4D/CINEMA 4D Visualize, Broadcast, Studio/Dynamics/Tips and Tricks called “The Party’s Over”

[Darby Edelen]

[Matjaz Molnar] “I have a simple table made out of a cube, just to test things out.
I did put collider tag (moving mesh) on the table and rigid body (apply to children) to the balls.”

I recommend using Static Mesh instead of Moving Mesh, unless you’re animating the position of the Table.

Also look into the Project Settings > Dynamics > Expert tab. Increasing the Steps per Frame here some will probably help.

Also for the pool balls themselves I recommend using the Convex Hull collision shape and setting the Sphere types to Octahedron.

The Octahedron will have more regularly distributed flat surfaces for the balls to rest on where as the Standard Sphere has quads of varying sizes and orientations.

Darby Edelen

[Matjaz Molnar]

Update:

For testing I am throwing now a standard sphere, octahedron sphere and a cube on the table.

With static mesh on the table the cube stops vibrating. The standard ones are still vibrating the octahedron is moving very slowly.

I raised the friction to twice the default value, lowered the bounce to half and increased the steps per frame to 10.

So the octahedron sphere is now moving very slowly, but stil not stopping in 1000 frames. The other standard ones are still shaking the same way.

Oh and something I noticed. When the balls and the cube fall, they are 1cm above the table is this normal?

[Adam Trachtenberg]

It would help if you could post your file.

[Matjaz Molnar]

The file: 5248_billiardstest0004.c4d.zip

As you can see I have been testing with different setting and objects.

[Brian Jones]

your dynamic tags all have Collision Noise at the default value of 0.5% that’s ok for normal scenes since it makes the usual collisions look more ‘real’ but a pool table is designed to have no (or close) random motion on collision so make those 0.
Everything has a 1 cm separation because the Project/Dynamics/Expert/Collision Margin is set to 1cm set it to 0 too.
Bounce of the pool table surface should be low (Because it is in reality) but Bounce of the side bumpers needs to be high so those (table surface and bumpers) will have to be separate objects (or you would need invisible proxy objects). Friction of the balls/table needs to be high enough to get the balls to roll, not slide, on the table but it may help most to reduce the Rotational Mass of the balls to help with this, but it can’t be too low.
After that probably Linear and Angular Damping to slow them down to something close to real.

[Matjaz Molnar]

Thank you guys for the hint, I think now I’ll be able to do the animation. It’s looking quite good for now.

Now I have to focus to modell a decent table and so on.