Help Obi rope Not working as advertised

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Obi rope Not working as advertised - tomasw33 - 20-04-2021

I followed the directions from the quick manual, those three steps did not produce a working obi rope in the scene. I see the obi solver and obi rope appear, but when entering playmode they just disappear. No simulation plays, and I can no longer see them in the scene view. I don't get any compiler errors. I read through each page of the manual and understand how it is supposed to work. I'm not sure why it is not working or producing a working simulation.

RE: Obi rope Not working as advertised - josemendez - 20-04-2021

(20-04-2021, 08:33 PM)tomasw33 Wrote: I followed the directions from the quick manual, those three steps did not produce a working obi rope in the scene. I see the obi solver and obi rope appear, but when entering playmode they just disappear. No simulation plays, and I can no longer see them in the scene view. I don't get any compiler errors. I read through each page of the manual and understand how it is supposed to work. I'm not sure why it is not working or producing a working simulation.

Hi there,

I’m unable to reproduce this, these steps do result in a working rope for me. Do the included sample scenes work for you?

Also, did you check out the tutorial videos?:

http://obi.virtualmethodstudio.com/videos.html

RE: Obi rope Not working as advertised - tomasw33 - 20-04-2021

(20-04-2021, 08:48 PM)josemendez Wrote: Hi there,

I’m unable to reproduce this, these steps do result in a working rope for me. Do the included sample scenes work for you?

Also, did you check out the tutorial videos?:

http://obi.virtualmethodstudio.com/videos.html

I'm not sure how you got it to work with the included manual and quickstart guides... I literally followed the steps, there's only three, and it didn't work. I did eventually get it to work after watching the youtube video, which by the way was not linked or mentioned on the store page or any where in the manual. I needed to add an attachment script, which is not mentioned in the quickstart guide, to prevent the rope from just falling into oblivion.

Don't get me wrong, it's working great now, but the manual and guides Really should be updated to mention how to use the different scripts that are included. None of them ever mentioning adding an attachment script for an anchor point, or adding an obi collider script to objects you want to interact with the rope.

RE: Obi rope Not working as advertised - josemendez - 20-04-2021

(20-04-2021, 08:33 PM)tomasw33 Wrote: I'm not sure how you got it to work with the included manual and quickstart guides... I literally followed the steps, there's only three, and it didn't work.[..]I needed to add an attachment script, which is not mentioned in the quickstart guide, to prevent the rope from just falling into oblivion.

You mention that the issue is the rope fell out of camera due to gravity, so it did work. You should be able to see a rope falling in play mode. However the basic steps result in a simple rope, not attached to anything. This is the same outcome you get by creating a rigidbody object in Unity, and nothing else. In absence of joints to attach it or a floor to collide with, the object will just fall.

(20-04-2021, 08:33 PM)tomasw33 Wrote: I did eventually get it to work after watching the youtube video, which by the way was not linked or mentioned on the store page or any where in the manual.

The "videos" page containing all videos is linked right at the top of the manual, it's hard to miss:
http://obi.virtualmethodstudio.com/tutorials/

The top menu shows "FAQ", "User Manual", "API", "Videos", "Performance", "References" and "Support". The link to the manual is in the quickstart guide, our webpage, and the about window. Feedback is most welcome though, where would you like to have these links?

(20-04-2021, 08:33 PM)tomasw33 Wrote: but the manual and guides Really should be updated to mention how to use the different scripts that are included. None of them ever mentioning adding an attachment script for an anchor point.

Not sure what you mean, it's literally the first thing mentioned in the "Attachments" page of the manual:
http://obi.virtualmethodstudio.com/tutorials/attachments.html

Quote:To create an attachment, select the actor you want to attach and look for ObiParticleAttachment in the Add Component menu.

(20-04-2021, 08:33 PM)tomasw33 Wrote: or adding an obi collider script to objects you want to interact with the rope.

First line of "Setting up colliders" section in the manual:
http://obi.virtualmethodstudio.com/tutorials/collisions.html

Quote:Add a ObiCollider component to any collider in your scene to make it work with Obi.

RE: Obi rope Not working as advertised - tomasw33 - 20-04-2021

(20-04-2021, 09:12 PM)josemendez Wrote: You mention that the issue is the rope fell out of camera due to gravity, so it did work. However the basic steps result in a basic rope, not attached to anything.

The "videos" page containing all videos is linked right at the top of the manual, it's hard to miss:
http://obi.virtualmethodstudio.com/tutorials/

The top menu shows "FAQ", "User Manual", "API", "Videos", "Performance", "References" and "Support". The link to the manual is in the quickstart guide, our webpage, and the about window. Feedback is most welcome though, where would you like to have these links?

Not sure what you mean, it's literally the first thing mentioned in the "Attachments" page of the manual:
http://obi.virtualmethodstudio.com/tutorials/attachments.html

First line of "Setting up colliders" section in the manual:
http://obi.virtualmethodstudio.com/tutorials/collisions.html

The included Quickstart manual in the project:

Yes, the information is in there IF you already Know where to look for it. It might help if the obi rope section itself referenced needing an anchor point, or that the constraint section had important information to avoid this. As it is, as someone with literally no knowledge of the asset I came in and became frustrated and upset. After spending a good deal of figuring it out I know how it works and I am happy with it. Just pointing out the information is a little difficult to find initially, especially coming in knowing nothing about how this works. For instance, why would I know that the rope didn't automatically anchor itself when that isn't mentioned in the obi rope section or the quickstart manual included with the download? In fact the only reason I thought to try looking up the attachment script is because I worked with obi fluid before and had some experience with the fact that these assets usually need a lot of new scripts added in to work.

RE: Obi rope Not working as advertised - josemendez - 21-04-2021

Thanks a lot for your feedback, there's some food for though in there. I'm considering adding a more lengthy, detailed version of the quickstart guide directly in the manual to guide the first steps.

(20-04-2021, 09:24 PM)tomasw33 Wrote: It might help if the obi rope section itself referenced needing an anchor point, or that the constraint section had important information to avoid this.

Obi actors (ropes in particular) do not need an attachment component to be functional, just like a rigidbody does not need a joint component.

(20-04-2021, 09:24 PM)tomasw33 Wrote: why would I know that the rope didn't automatically anchor itself when that isn't mentioned in the obi rope section or the quickstart manual included with the download?

I guess this depends on what your expectations are, but all physics engines I've ever come across (both realtime and offline) do not anchor, attach, or limit body movement in any way by default. It's up to you to add these if you want to.

Placing attachments by default and then having to optionally remove them is kinda weird, specially since it's not obvious what part of a rope you might be interested in anchoring/attaching, or where to: one end? both? somewhere along the middle? Most users would just end up removing the "default" attachment to then add their own, which adds friction to the workflow and can quickly become annoying.

One alternative would be to provide a "Obi Rope (attached)" option in the GameObject menu, in addition to the regular one. This way you could create a rope that has one of its ends anchored by default, and still keep the ability to create one with no anchors. Do you think this would be useful?