whats the state of rigid body dynamics in max these days

[super gnu]

ive been asked to simulate a few hundred approximately L-shaped objects falling out of a smashed container and piling up on the floor around it.

Its just for a still, and ive not used dynamics for a couple of years.

i understand massfx is still the built-in tool in max.. no idea how reliable it is these days.

given that the smashed container is gonna be a pretty complex colision object (10-50k polys i recon, lots of jagged edges to snag things) , and there will be a large number of falling items, i need something reliable, fast and easy to set up.

if its too fiddly i may as well just put my headphones on and start placing the objects by hand.

are there any current go-to plugins which work extremely well for this kind of simple, but high volume stuff?

[fixeighted]

So the still is a smashed container with the Ls lying in/around it?

Could solve the container first and subsequently the Ls....might be quicker/simpler. iirc Massfx will account for concave volumes well enough, although it's been a while since I used it, though maybe trying to do the whole thing in one solve will break it a little/lot/entirely
I would try it for a few mins with MassFX and then go the Rayfire route if it doesn't work out.
Seems simple enough tbh but can't test it as afd until tomorrow, when I will give it a go for the hell of it

[super gnu]

its even simpler than it sounded.. the container is pre-shattered. i just need to dump a load of l's (well they are inhalers actually) so it looks like they spilled out of the container when it broke.

ive actually got it working very smoothly and easily in massfx.. it seems to freak out less than i remember.

my main issue is, in order to get hundreds in there i have to have a stack of them spaced out above the container and drop them in at the start of the sim..

This means when i sim they fall quite far and have too much energy, scattering quite wide across the floor.. client is "imagining" neat piles up against side of container.

i dont know how to pre-pack a volume with irregular objects. maybe if i could do that it would work better.

alternatively im just going to have to hand place little hand packed "towers" of them around sides of container and let the sim just just settle them in the piles he wants..

[squintnic]

rayfire is my go to tool for rigid body stuff. mass fx seems slow and broken

[super gnu]

so you both suggest using rayfire as a general purpose rigid body tool? interesting. i was under the impression it was solely for smashing stuff up. i willl have to investigate further. Anyway in this simple use-case, massfx seems to be working fine.. its faster than realtime with 300 inhalers (proxy meshes) and a 5kpoly collision object for the container. i get a few jitters as the pile settles, but since its for a still, this isnt important.

[fixeighted]

Rayfire is great yes. However I did this in a few minutes....so seems like it may do what you need

[fixeighted]

It would be very interesting to see which of these 2 methods is quickest, as it already seems that the PFlow setup is extremely easy to set up and sims in realtime with no jittering and seemingly perfect collision detection.
Excellent test to rid me of my hangover!