[Closed] Verlet integration ?

The Verlet formula helps you to calculate “particle” position at time with forces, such as velocity, gravity etc… in mind. As a result of this, you can “simulate” dynamics in real-time. Just like d3coy demonstrates on his blog on the three bells. A very nice demo, btw.

Btw: by “particle”, I actually mean a point in space. It can be a vertex, it can be an actual particle or even a point helper, or whatever, since you’ll be calculating values for X, Y and Z coordinate, which, in turn, gives you the complete Point3 position value (in Max language) for your object.

Nice finds, thanks

As for an actual MXS code, I’ll be doing some R&D in this field soon, so I’ll come back and post my results when they’re done. At the moment, I only have a few snippets which, alone, aren’t of much use.

Basically, what it all the formuals say is that you’re calculating a position of an object (a Point3 value in Max) in time. The current time, for which you calculate the whole formula, is marked with a letter “t”, the time step is marked with a “Dt” (D meaning the triangle, which reads Delta, meaning “offset”). So you step back and forth in time (which is possible in Max as you already know where the object is, was and will be thanks to the animation curves) and calculate given properties.

In the end, this whole Verlet Integration forula will result in an real-time dynamics simulation, very primitive though, but you can work on off of that and build extremely complex systems with this knowledge.

As I said, I’ll be doing some R&D in this field soon, so I’ll come back if you haven’t figured it out by then.