The attached blend file is an engine pod for a spaceship:
engine pod.blend (1.42 MB)
The spaceship will eventually have four of these pods, but I’m trying to make the physics work right on one of them before I duplicate them. The engine thrust comes by way of applyImpulse, to make this as realistic as possible in terms of how a spaceship operates in zero-g.
I’m having two problems:
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When I apply the impulse (press the up arrow), it starts to spin the Engine Pod, not push it forward. (The impulse comes from the python script impulseEngineLag attached to the Glow Impulse spotlight, which is a child of the Engine Pod mesh.) Why is it spinning? I want Engine Pod to be a rigid body, because eventually I want to add small thrusters to provide angular momentum. But I want this impulse to just push it forward, not spin it.
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Inside the Engine Pod mesh is a half-sphere named Engine Reflector, which is also a child of Engine Pod. The point of the Engine Reflector is to reflect the Glow Impulse spotlight whose energy is tied to the intensity of the impulse — basically an effect to make the engine look like a space engine. The effect works great except that Glow Reflector always flies away from Engine Pod when Engine Pod starts spinning. Why doesn’t Glow Reflector stay in place relative to Engine Pod? This one is especially interesting to watch in wireframe mode. (I know, per #1 above, I don’t want Engine Pod to be spinning right now, but eventually I do want to add angular momentum, and I definitely don’t want Engine Reflector to be spinning away like it is now.)
Thanks for any help.