2009

reactor
reactor is a toolset that allows animators and artists to control and simulate complex physical
scenes in 3ds Max. reactor supports integrated rigid and soft body dynamics, cloth simulation,
and fluid simulation. It can simulate constraints and joints for articulated bodies. It can also
simulate physical behaviors such as wind and motors. You can use all of these features to
create rich dynamic environments.
Once you have created an object in 3ds Max, you can assign physical properties such as mass,
friction, and elasticity to it with reactor. Objects can be fixed, free, attached to springs, or
attached together using a variety of constraints. By assigning physical characteristics to objects
like this, you can model real-world scenarios and then simulate them to produce physically
accurate, keyframed animations.
After you set up your reactor scene, you can preview it quickly using the real-time simulation
display window. This allows you to test and play with a scene interactively. You can alter
positions of all physical objects in the scene, dramatically reducing the design time. You can
then transfer the scene back into 3ds Max with a single mouse click while retaining all the
properties needed for the animation.
reactor frees you from having to hand-animate time-consuming secondary effects, like
exploding buildings or draping curtains. reactor also supports all standard 3ds Max
functionality such as keyframes and skinning, so you can use both conventional and physical
animation in the same scene. Convenient utilities, such as automatic keyframe reduction, let
you tweak and alter the physically generated parts of an animation after it has been created.
The remainder of this chapter describes each of reactor's features in detail. Also, the included
tutorials step you through creating some typical reactor scenes. Together, we hope these will
help you to get the most from reactor.
If you would like to find out more about dynamics simulation, see
Introducing Dynamics
Simulation
on page 3889.
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