Reactor is a physics engine developed by the Irish software company Havok for use in Autodesk

3ds Max Autodesk 3ds Max, formerly 3D Studio and 3D Studio Max, is a professional 3D computer graphics program for making 3D animations, models, games and images. It is developed and produced by Autodesk Media and Entertainment. It has modeling capabil ...

. Reactor was fully integrated with 3ds Max from versions 5 to 2011. In 3ds Max 2012, Reactor was replaced by a PhysX-based engine called MassFX. Reactor was often used for realistic physics simulation that would be difficult or time-consuming to animate by hand.

Dynamics types

Reactor is capable of computing rigid body, soft body, cloth, and rope collisions. Reactor can also simulate dynamics of any supported type interacting with a water volume, with adjustable viscosity and depth.

Forces and constraints

Reactor includes a large number of forces that can be used in simulation, apart from the default gravity: springs,

dashpots A dashpot, also known as a damper, is a mechanical device that resists motion via viscous friction. The resulting force is proportional to the velocity, but acts in the opposite direction, slowing the motion and absorbing energy. It is commonly us ...

, motors, wind, fractures (breakable objects), and a "toy car" type, with definable body/axis/wheels. Reactor also has many constraints available, including hinges, point-to-point constraints, prismatic constraints, car-wheel constraints, point-to-path constraints, and ragdoll constraints to simulate a lifeless body. In addition, Reactor is compatible with Space Warp modifiers in 3ds Max.

References

3D graphics software Software companies of Ireland Computer physics engines Intel software {{Graphics-software-stub