Dynamics Challenge: The Chain Reaction!

Hey everyone,

Well I was mulling over ideas for the next challenge....trying to think of something we could do that's character based, or maybe some other type of effects thing....but then Zach and Babe (two guys I work with) decided to chime in at the last minute and make the best suggestion ever!...a Rube Goldberg machine challenge!

Who/what is Rube Goldberg?....well, he's the guy that started the whole "insane and crazy contraption to perform a simple task" thing. Here's a website about his stuff:

http://www.rube-goldberg.com/

...and here's a direct example of the kind of thing I'm talking about:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=0J16dyV4Du8

The challenge, and/or some guidelines:

-Basically, your goal is to make the COOLEST rube goldberg machine ever, using only dynamics.
-Your final animation must have a clear start (ie...a character/thing/object sets off the chain reaction) and a clear purpose (the reaction must end in some simple task ultimately being performed....maybe a whole chain of events are triggered which in the end lead to a light-switch being turned on, or maybe a doorknob being turned etc)
-The only object that may contain manually-user-created keyframes is the object/thing/character that kick-starts the whole chain reaction. THE REST OF THE MOTION MUST BE DYNAMIC!!!!
-You may use any kind of dynamic feature of your program of choice, be it cloth, rigid bodies, rope, soft-bodies etc etc...
-Your animation may be of any length/duration (not going to put a frame cap on this challenge)

That's it!!! You have until November 24th to get it done! Make your thread in this forum with the syntax:

Chain Reaction: <yourname>

So, mine for example, would look like this:

Chain Reaction: Tyson

Post any questions you have in this thread....otherwise...get to it!

Holy Jiminey Cricket Mr. Ibele! Now that's a serioulsy awsome challenge! Great great great thinking guys! This is going to be a real challenge and it will be awsome to try and figure out how to do everything.

This reminds me of a car advert we had here in the UK not long ago;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9o9Sr_vw5I

Awsome stuff!

Yep! That's exactly the type of thing we're looking for in this challenge

SWEET ..........

haahaaaha


nice one t

Well Tyson this is a seriously cool idea for a comp. As soon as I heard of it I thought of the same video as Iestyn. Cant wait. hmmm what tooo do. The possibilities are endles. Haha might be cool to do the whole thing in reactor, theres abit of a challenge. Have to see what my tiny brain can come up with. Good luck to all.

Was just thinking. Does anyone else here remember the old breakfast making machine in the inventors kitchen from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. That thing was awesome

Wow great idea, i will surely participate to this one... Anyway, i'm having holiday this week... Surely enough to find some ideas and draw a storyboard... Or should i say, a dynamic board =)

I haven't had the best relationship with Maya's dynamics... I'll give her a shot, but if you don't hear from me for a bit, it's because i've killed everyone in the world.



edit: Also, can we keyframe when the objects are turned dynamic on some objects, so there isn't a bunch of annoying jitter? So if yes, pretty much the only thing that doesn't have to be dynamic is making things start, but not collide with eachother

I guess overall there are gonna have to be excpections here and there to get things to "turn on" and "turn off" properly in some places....(wind, initial positions of objects or whatever)....as long as you don't set any motion keyframes on those objects, it should be fine

Got it

here's some inspiration for you lunatic maniacs



-Z

Ha ha ha!! That was awome Zach! Thanks for posting that. Ha ha ha

hahaha, zach!!

i vote that if anyone has someone get shot in their animation, they automatically win!

Oh i remembered about this one as well;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeJjPzlwi1w

A band called The Bravery - it's more dominos oriantated but sill feasable right?

this is a briliant idea, let's see if i can come up with anything...

iest thanks for that first video link. i was looking for that vid since 3 years about

if you haven't played this game before you MUST. i only wish i had the time to participate.

maybe you can get some further inspiration from the game.




ps. if anyone finds a download for the full game let me know.

Oh man, I wish I could get in on this. I love dynamics work.
Unfortunatly Im moving, so Ill have zero time to work on this.
Maybe the next challenge once Im settled

Good Luck guys

Mike

Hey guys,

Is there anybody out there who's been working on an entry but could use an extension? This is your last chance to request one!

Ok...you have until SUNDAY night (around 8pm EST I guess) to post your final entry in this thread! On sunday night the entries will be collected and a voting thread compiled