Rigid body initial velocity - no ICE

[David Rivera]

Hi, I am setting up a really basic rigid body simulation from the toolbar (no ICE for the moment).

And so I just parented a couple of boxes to nulls (legs) and then parented those to a thorax null (with corresponding box child)

I animate these as I need, set the rigid body property page for the boxes to "mute".

I "activate" the rbd for the boxes to collide with the ball at frame 33.

The ball is child of an animated null. What I´m trying to accomplish is that the rbd ball picks up it´s initial velocity

from the animated null. But this is not happening (or maybe I´m releasing (activating the rbd property too close to the boxes) too early).

Here´s the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVQ5V5j6GLQ&feature=youtu.be

And there´s also an attachment pic explaining this.

How could I make the ball hit the boxes with initial velocity picked up from animation? I´ve read the online

help for softimage 2012, but I think the ppg picture there it´s outdated from 2011 or before..

Any ideas for this?

Thanks.

David R.

ps: I got no plugins for this. And if this is to be set on ICE, remains to be "seen...." :)

[Adam Sale]

what if you were just to animate the ball directly, instead of using a null parent?  Set keys to animate it through space, while defining it as a passive RBD, 

then animate it being an Active RBD at the point where the ball's last key is set.

That should work.