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 one of the options in the Collisions section of the Commands menu, depending on the shape of the mesh.
There are three options available:

Add box creates a box shaped attached to the mesh.

Add capsule creates a capsule shape.

With the Add mesh option, the shape of the mesh itself is used to calculate collisions.

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.

Box Collision Settings

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).

Capsule Collision Settings

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).

Mesh Collision Settings

Finally, the Add mesh option creates two groups of settings for the selected object.

The first is Mesh Collision:

It has one parameter - Is active - which enabled and disables the collision shape.

The other group of settings is Collision Material:

Collision type
This option sets the type of collision that should be used for the object.

Sufrace means the algorithm is applied when a character (or other object) collides with any point of the collision object.

Pin means the algorithm is applied to every frame where the character interacts with the object, as if the character is suspended on some kind of climbing hold.
When Ragdoll is applied, a Pin collision is interpreted as a fixed point.
When Physics Corrector is used instead, this collision is interpreted as a point at which a force is applied (the direction of this force can be arbitrary).

The difference between the 'surface' and the 'pin' type of collisions is described in greater detail on the Physics Corrector page.

Friction
Sets the force of friction for the collision.

Bounciness
Sets the rebound force for the collision.

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.

Example

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