Creating Some More Bounce

The collision with the table does not generate much movement. This is what we want to fix now.

Try 'p' again (remember 'p' starts the game engine and the escape key stops the game engine), the 3D cube still behaves as before but looks a little better, at least we have some color. Time to add a little bounce to the ounce. Select the cube and go down to the materials panel (Shading, Materials Button). A little below the Col button is a button labeled "Dyn". Click on the "Dyn" button and find and click on the Button labeled "Restitut". Enter 0.7 and return in that button. Now select the table and enter 1.0 in the "Restitut" field.

Finally, an Animation With Some Bounce!

Give 'p' another try, this time the 3D cube should bounce around realistically after hitting the table. We have now used many of the features required for the other videos.

Save the file again.

Saving the Motion of the Objects

In order to be able to render the frames for the final animation we have to save the motion of the falling cube. This motion is saved in something called IPO curves. We don't need to worry too much about the curves right now, just how to save our motion in them.

To get started go to the menu bar at the top of the screen. Click "Game" on the menu bar and then select "Record Game Physics to IPO" in the drop down menu. This means that the next time we run the game engine the motion of the objects will be saved to the IPO curves.

At this point we can use defaults for the rest of the animation. Start the game engine with 'p' and let it run until the cube comes to rest or falls off the table we created. Press the escape key to stop the engine.

Now be sure to save the file with another name. This file will have the object motion contained in the file.