Date: Fri, 13 Mar 2009 11:16:13 -0500 (CDT)
   From: Mark Jacobson <jacobson@cns.uni.edu>
     To: 810-088-11-spring@uni.edu
Subject: [810-088-11-SPRING] Further note on Pool Table...

Do NOT use the Polygonal Cube for the pool table surface if you try to
  do the Boolean Difference and make ROUND pool table holes instead of
  square ones by just removing FACES.

I just tested out the following:

   1. Polygonal Plane for the Pool Table surface.

   2. Position 4 different Polygonal Cylinders in the four corners
      of the Plane so that we have four pool ball holes.

      Note:  The Polygonal Cylinders have to be completely inside
             of the Plane, or the Boolean Difference will NOT work
             and both objects will disappear.

   3. One at a time, do the Boolean difference to cut out one hole
      at a time.  The holes will only cut out the TOP HALF of the
      Cylinder, so it will be kind of like a real pool table that does not
      let the balls fall through all the way to the floor.

      Note:  Some students had a pool ball fall through the sides of the
             cylinder, it the cylinder is deep enough for the ball to fit
             through.  That is certainly okay and I don't know how many
             weeks or months it will be before I figure out how to prevent
             that.

   4. When done cutting the four holes,
      you can convert the surface into a PASSIVE RIGID BODY.

   5. Now, create the pool balls and make them ACTIVE RIGID BODIES
      effected by GRAVITY field.

      They will bounce off the table.

      They will roll into the holes but bounce off the bottom of the
      cylinder container hole and come to a rest there or else
      maybe roll out of the cylinder sides.

   6. Put the sides on the pool table last and make the sides into
      Passive Rigid Bodies.

      The sides can be cubes.

   Never mind.  When I put the sides on, the pool balls now get stopped by
the pool table, but only after they sink halfway into the soft felt!

   If you get a very nice pool table with round holes and the balls do NOT
fall through the holes, but they do move around, that is okay!

   If you want to convert to square holes like the handout uses, that is
okay too.

   Removing FACES from a polygonal PLANE or removing FACES from a POLYGONAL
CUBE does work okay if you want to have square holes in the
pool table.  There are no problems with the Active Rigid Body and the
Passive Rigid Body with that approach.

   If you are in the HOC C mode for select components and in the
Component select FACES mode, you can do the following to a Polygonal
CUBE from the TOP panel view.

   Draw a bounding box around the entire corner face.  That bounding box
will select 4 faces.  The top of the table face, bottom of the table
face and the two faces that form the corner of the table surface.

   Press the delete key and that entire square will be removed from the
pool table.

   Of course you can use a polygonal plane too and its the same except
you just remove one face instead of removing 4 faces!

   I will be flexible on the projects that use the ROUND holes in pool
tables instead of SQUARE holes, because of these Maya complications.
If your pool ball animation does NOT have one pool ball fall through the
pool ball holes, that will be okay.

   More later and feel free to send me email if you are NOT done yet and
what problem you ran into, which is probably the one we talked about here
and talked about today in the lab.

   Mark