Does Obi Softbody fit for a realistic snowboard physics simulation?

[josemendez]

Thank you for the response,
I’ve attached how the snowboard deforms just in case. The 3D image shows the deformation during a drifting turn. No refund is needed—you did an excellent job, and I don’t mind contributing even if I won’t be using it.
I believe that in this case one of two approaches would be more suitable:

1. Split the snowboard into several parts and connect them with joints
   
2. Use a rig + mesh collider with its baking
   
   

Best regards,
Alex

Hi Alex,

First thing I would try is to rig the snowboard mesh using 3 bones, like so (excuse poor ASCII art):
  ___________________
/                                  \
(    O-------O-------O      )
\___________________/

Such a setup allows the left and rightmost bones to rotate/translate and smoothly deform the snowboard.

Now, create 3 rigidbodies: for the left, center and right part of the snowboard and attach them with joints. Which specific joint type to use would depend on the amount of control you want, hinge joints would work well enough imho.

Then just parent the 3 bones in the rigged snowboard mesh to their corresponding rigidbody, so that the mesh follows the rigidbodies.

If you've ever played Half-Life 2, the mattresses were done using this method. It's a lot cheaper than an actual softbody simulation, and for somewhat rigid objects it works better and it's more controllable:


An alternate, even cheaper approach would be to procedurally deform the mesh - either using blend shapes or a vertex shader. If you can detect turns and player weight on the floor, you can use this information to drive vertex deformation.

kind regards,