Maya Dynamica Plugin

From Physics Simulation Wiki

1 Dynamica History
2 Download
3 Features of the Dynamica Maya plugin
4 Manual
5 Video Tutorials
6 Sample files
7 Support
8 SIGGRAPH 2011

Dynamica History

Disney Animation Studios contributed their in-house Maya plugin called 'Dynamica' to the Bullet project. This Dynamica plugin was used for physics special effects in the creation of the animated feature Bolt.

Download

The source code of the Dynamica plugin has its own repository at http://dynamica.googlecode.com
Microsoft Windows precompiled installers of the Dynamica plugin can be downloaded from http://code.google.com/p/bullet/downloads/list

It is trivial to compile and install Dynamica from source code for Linux and Mac OSX:

For Linux:

tar -zxf dynamica-source*.tgz
cd Extras/MayaPlugin
make
sudo make install

For Mac OSX:

tar -zxf dynamica-source*.tgz
cd Extras/MayaPlugin
make -f Makefile.mac
sudo make -f Makefile.mac install

Features of the Dynamica Maya plugin

Dynamica is cross-platform and works on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX
Dynamica runs on Maya 8, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012.
Active, passive, and kinematic rigid bodies
Sphere, Box, Hull(convex), and Mesh(concave) collision shapes
Force breakable Nail, Hinge, Slider, and Six-degrees-of-freedom constraints
Frame based choreography control and simulation baking
The plugin exports to COLLADA Physics format and the native .bullet binary physics file format

Manual

Here is the Dynamica user manual

Video Tutorials

Some video tutorials how to use Dynamica are available on-line. You can download (right-click - save) or watch those instruction movies on-line. !! Note: These are slightly out of date, but the current version (2.78) supports similar workflows.