Interaction with Environment

There might be times when you need your character to interact with physical objects in the scene.
The way to do this in Cascadeur is by assigning Collision Shapes to these objects.

Creating Collision Shapes

To create a collision shape:

1. Switch to the Mesh Mode.

2. Select the mesh.

3. Select Collisions → Add box or Collisions → Add capsule from the Commands menu, depending on the shape of the mesh.

Collision Shape Settings

After this, a new set of settings will be added to your mesh. It can be viewed on the Object Properties panel.

If you've selected the Add box option, you should see the Box collision behavior:

Is active
The main option. When it is enabled, the collision shape is taken into account by the simulation.
Enabled by default.

Size
The height, the width and the depth of the box collision object.

Position
The object’s position in the scene (in relation to its parent object).

Rotation
The object’s rotation across the three coordinate axes (also in global coordinates).

If, however, you've used the Add capsule option, you'll get the Capsule collision behavior instead:

Is active
Like with Box Collision, when this option is enabled, the collision shape is taken into account by the simulation.
Enabled by default.

Length
The length (height) of the capsule object.

Radius
The radius of the capsule object.

Position
The capsule’s position in the scene (in relation to its parent object).

Rotation
The capsule’s rotation across the three coordinate axes (in global coordinates).

Collisions and AutoPhysics

By default, collision shapes are not visible in the Physics Ghost. In many cases, however, it could be useful to view the object the character interacts with. To do this:

1. Switch to the Mesh Mode.

2. Select the mesh.

3. Add the character’s mesh to the selection.

4. Go to the AutoPosing mode.

5. Add the character’s Center of Mass to the selection.

6. Select Center of Mass → Snap mesh to the center of mass from the Commands menu.

After this, the copy of the collision shape should be added to the AutoPhysics ghost.

Characters collide with collision shapes in the exact same way they collide with the ground. All of the Fulcrum Point settings are applied to this type of collision as well.

Collision shapes can be viewed in the Rigging mode: