MyRobot Development Part 32
Added 2024-08-24 23:36:56 +0000 UTCVideo shows the summary, text shows the technical!
This week:
Hyper Realistic Finger Grabbing
Physics Woes
Hyper Realistic Finger Grabbing
This was needed because the robot was not able to actually wrap its fingers around objects. It merely added a joint to glue the hand and the grabbed object together. But this now provides an additional step in the LateUpdate phase that allows the hand to physically grab the hand in an accurate fashion.
The system works with capsule colliders facing any direction x,y,z. However it ignores the spherical caps of the capsule and it only focuses on the body of the capsule.
Still, it covers 95% of all use cases which is perfect for now.
Physics Woes
Ragdoll physics in games is hard. Very hard. I'm working with a ragdoll that can now grab onto things. This extends the number of chained joints on the arm limb and that makes it more difficult for Unity to solve.
In the past I've sunk many many hours trying to solve conceptually simple problems like how to make a rope, how to make ragdolls grab onto each other, how to make chains. Unity is just not built for these kinds of things. So it always comes down to making compromises.
The first thing I always do is remove physics. For example, in the past, I used to add a fixed joint to objects to glue them together. But because that creates chains of objects, I removed the physic component by simply combining both shapes into the same rigid body. This is how I was able to achieve many larva jumping on the robot and sticking to it without the physics spazzing out. They just become additional colliders instead of adding joints to the robot.
This week I had issues making the robot walk up to the washing machine and press a button. It's hard mostly because the arm or the robot can get stuck in everything. So I think I'm going to pivot and remove the physics by just having the robot play a washing machine animation when it gets close to it. That way I can manually animate and ensure no part of the robot will get stuck to any surrounding physics.
Also we got a few more drawings.

Stay tuned!
Comments
Of course. Will do.
sgthale
2024-08-25 04:07:55 +0000 UTCIt's unrelated to the post but could you add the option for us to throw stuff we grab if small enough? Dealing with the larva is a bit annoying in zones with 2 or more nests close by, since no matter what you do some will latch into the robot and you have to rush through and then remove them in a safe zone, which wouldn´t be an issue if it wasn't so slow. First, you can´t adjust the sensibility so aiming at the larva takes at least a few seconds, more if you have a toaster PC like me, then you have to grab, aim away, drop it, and jump to squish it, all for each larva, which is time consuming and by the time you are finished like 1/4 of the battery is gone. if you could just throw them at something hard it would be easier to deal with them and they would be just the right level of annoying, and well it being able to throw stuff could lead to more opportunities for puzzles and stuff down the line
Axel
2024-08-25 01:49:15 +0000 UTC