Marbles and Dominoes Huge Relay Race 

You are right, but in a race this long the camera would eventually be following just one marble, which would be a little boring. The ideal is to find a natural way to slow the front runners without stopping them. Working on it.

@@moreballsyou’ll get there

Perhaps instead of which color finishes first, maybe the leader could be chosen based on which one gets to those points where they all get stopped.

​@@moreballsA funnel would work. Since this is physics-based, you could have them all go into the same funnel and then be sorted afterwards.

@@sabertx3273 Cool idea. Might be hard for people to follow though unless the score updates in real time.

Thanks very much! :)

Yeah fair enough. The newer videos are more of a race, without the stops that allow everyone to catch up.

Yeah same here! 😄

Yeah you're right!

Rainbow road with a really good sound track

Looks like how Rainbow Road was made and tested for Mario Kart. I love it! 😉

Good question! The marbles are identical. I usually create just one, then copy/paste to make more and then I adjust the colors only. There are some randomness factors at play but I must confess I'm not entirely familiar with the mechanics of Blender's physics engine! Some possibilities are: 1. My best guess is that a randomness parameter or seed value is responsible. The same seed value would produce the same simulation, but it looks like the seed value is based on object data (for example its position on the X axis) so the different marbles start out with different seed values. When a simulation doesn't go the right way, like when the marbles leave the track or get stuck half way, rerunning the animation doesn't fix it - I get the same result. To get a different result I move all the marbles' starting positions the same amount, very slightly along the Y or Z axis. That seems to resets the seed values. 2. Randomness is probably unavoidable with sampling-based physics like we have here. 3. The engine might use floating-point arithmetic, which can introduce small numerical variations that compound over time. 4. If the engine uses multithreading or parallel processing that might introduce variations in the timing of calculations - so for example, two marbles hitting a wall at the same time might not bounce off it at exactly the same time because the two collisions are not calculated at exactly the same time. These are only guesses. I still have a lot to learn about Blender! Someone with more knowledge is welcome to enlighten us!

@@moreballs thanks for the answer! Yes, probably all solid objects have a randomness value inside them, and this give the differences!

Excellent feedback, thank you very much. - Yes, I agree. I make the marbles quite big (to improve the physics calculations) which makes the animation look slow. In the newer races I've sped them up. - It's done in Blender. :) In the interest of keeping the render times down I adjust a bunch of settings and I use the Eevee render engine which gives an approximation of reflections based on what's visible on the screen - not as accurate as the ray-traced reflections in the Cycles render engine. But my render times are up to 40 times faster! In my experience so far only 3D artists/animators notice the difference. Also I'm not really aiming for maximum realism but rather for a fun visual experience. - A reasonably good percentage of people who watch all the way to the end of the race stick around for replays. That said I am working on ways to make the replays more engaging. Thanks again for taking the time to share your feedback. Much appreciated!

Ahh Eevee, makes sense. I mostly use Unity so it looked me like game engine but yeah I understand your opinion on speed 👍

Thanks very much for your comment. The reason turquoise got an extra ball is because in the previous race there was a glitch on the track and turquoise got frozen in place because of it, unable to finish the race. I saw that too late! So I wanted to make up for it somehow in this race. :)

@@moreballs Ah. Figured that could be what happened. That or turquoise got sent completely off the track and didn't finish. Good to know the full story. Thank you for the response, and have a wonderful day!

Thanks very much! :)

@@moreballs you’re welcome ☺️

Thank you so much! I still have an enormous amount to learn before I can think of teaching! Maybe someday in the distant future. :)

@@moreballs don’t sell yourself short, your videos look amazing. Keep up the great work 🤗

Yeah fair enough ☺

😄 Thanks for your comment. They seem to be used pretty much interchangeably but I guess people have their preference. I went with turquoise because cyan is more commonly used in painting and printmaking. The name turquoise is from the gem and is more common in jewelry design - I figure that makes it more appropriate for the marble.😜

@@moreballs yea alright makes sense lol, I suppose I’m just more used to calling it cyan.

Dude you are the king of replying to comments in the most rational disarming way! You should do a tutorial/masterclass on responding to feedback

@@bencressman6110 Ikr! They were great about that!

🔴♥

Created in Blender. :)

is it free@@moreballs

​@@moreballs Blender Cycles? How long did it take you to complete the render of the entire race?

@halen7481 I love Cycles but that would take forever! :) I use Eevee, aiming for a fun visual experience rather than realism. Rendering takes about 3 hours per race.

Yeah fair enough. In the newer races I tried to make it more fair by letting the front runners go.

Yeah I thought the same thing. The newer videos are sped up :) Many thanks for the feedback!

The standard flag has red and purple on the outsides. I intentionally used a different color order for the marble tracks because I wanted a rainbow, just a rainbow, with no meaning attached. :) Anyone can read into it what they wish of course, but it's not intended to represent a pride flag.

@@moreballsI swear, everyone thinks rainbows mean something/someone is gay, but I genuinely don’t care. Rainbows are cool, you know? (Don’t take this the wrong way, I’m just stating my opinion. Also, you have a new subscriber!)

You mean a f***ing rainbow? Literally the visible light spectrum?

The colors of the rainbow were before LGBT was even created.

LGBT people did not invent the rainbow.

Yeah it's animation, using complex simulated physics. I think there is a lot of fun to be had with this. There are things we can do here in the virtual world that are difficult or impossible to do irl. That's what I'm here to do. :) If you want to come along for the ride you are welcome, if you prefer real life races that's ok too. There are awesome real life marble race channels here on YT. :)

@@moreballs that's why I said what I said. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORING! 🥱🥱🥱🥱

Well it's an animation :)