Simulation - Animating with Blender: How to Create Short Animations from Start to Finish - page 260

try using a different shape for Bounds that more closely approximates the shape of your object. You can also
try to decrease the Radius control to make the physics engine think that the object is smaller than it really is.
Another thing that might happen is that the canisters may initially bump upward a bit or fall a little to land
on the counter. This is because the tolerances on the boundaries of the objects in the physics engine might
not be exactly the same as the real mesh boundaries, causing the canisters to think they are a little above the
counter, in which case they need to fall onto it, or even slightly inside the counter and in need of a slight ver-
tical push. In either case, a slight adjustment to either the counter object or the canisters themselves will fi x
the problem. It is easy and quick to test any new positioning with the P key.
So if you can hit the P key and not have everything go crazy, it's time to add the object that will knock
the canisters off the counter. In a real animation situation, you would synchronize this object to the actual
character who is doing the damage: the dog, the Beast, or whoever else may be wandering by. The driving
motion is done in the normal way, by setting a starting and ending keyframe. Figure 14.35 shows the start
and endpoints of the sphere in this example, set on frame 1 and frame 31. Then, enable the colliding object in
the Logic buttons as an Actor , and assign it an appropriate Bounds type.
Figure 14.35 The sphere keyframed to move across the canisters