Reactor

Introduction to Reactor.

Open the Reactor Toolbar (Left click blank area on right of top toolbar).

To access Reactor – Utilities panel – click on Reactor

Toolbar has six different fuctions: Reactor Collections, Reactor Modifiers, Reactor Objects, Reactor Constraints, the Property Editor and playback / animation tools.

Toolbar Buttons

Rigid body – Bricks tumble, skittles (rigid elements).

Cloth Collection.

Soft body collection.

Create rope.

Deforming mesh.

Helpers – Create plane etc.  Create water.

Constraints.

Modifiers – Cloth modifier.  Apply modifier first.

Open property editor – mass.

Analyse World.

Preview Animation.

Create Animation.


Using Reactor to create a snooker animation

A plane was used to create a snooker table surface. The snooker balls were created using spheres and the snooker cue was created from a cylinder.
The Spheres and cylinder were positioned and the Rigid body collection clicked on. The viewport was then clicked on and the Rigid body properties box is displayed. In the properties box click add and a selection box is then displayed. Highlight the Spheres and the cylinder from the list and press ok. The three objects are now in the properties box.
The properties editor is then used to alter properties such as mass and function. Unyielding should be checked to enable objects that are required to move to be free rather than fixed.
Keyframing was then used to animate the movement of the cylinder and Spheres. The final scene was then rendered as a avi file.