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

Autodesk Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that makes software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. Autodesk is headquartere ...

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 cap ...

. Reactor was fully integrated with 3ds Max from versions 5 to 2011. In 3ds Max 2012, Reactor was replaced by a

PhysX PhysX is an open-source realtime physics engine middleware SDK developed by Nvidia as a part of Nvidia GameWorks software suite. Initially, video games supporting PhysX were meant to be accelerated by PhysX PPU (expansion cards designed by ...

-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 In physics, a rigid body (also known as a rigid object) is a solid body in which deformation is zero or so small it can be neglected. The distance between any two given points on a rigid body remains constant in time regardless of external fo ...

, soft body, cloth, and rope collisions. Reactor can also simulate dynamics of any supported type interacting with a water volume, with adjustable

viscosity The viscosity of a fluid is a measure of its resistance to deformation at a given rate. For liquids, it corresponds to the informal concept of "thickness": for example, syrup has a higher viscosity than water. Viscosity quantifies the inte ...

and depth.

Forces and constraints

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

gravity In physics, gravity () is a fundamental interaction which causes mutual attraction between all things with mass or energy. Gravity is, by far, the weakest of the four fundamental interactions, approximately 1038 times weaker than the stro ...

: springs, dashpots, 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