This three part tutorial shows a very simple example walkthrough. Initially explains how to record mocap using VR and create the mocap of the officer kicking open the door and then walking into the room.  Then the second part explains the export process and importing the scene into Blender. The last goes into detail about connecting the door model to the exported door rig (animated empty) and final rendering:

All of the above tutorials were created very quickly and many steps were missed. One important note is how the feet did not react to the door when the avatar kicked it open, so there was infinite force imparted. That was because the default ragdoll collisions were enabled. However this tutorial later includes a section explaining how to enable Feet Physics so that the avatar's feet would appear to react or deflect slightly when colliding with the door, so the door's mass is taken into account during the simulation, and provides additional parameters that can be adjusted in-game to change the behavior of the effect. For kicking physics enable Feet Physics, but also for pushing you can enable Hands Physics option that works exactly the same! More mention about this in the Touch Collisions section below.

All of the assets for this tutorial are already included with the game so you can follow along and easily create a similar final rendered animation. You can even adapt the exported results to your own custom Blends to create entirely new environments without needing to build any custom assets for the game, simply use the provided example scenes as templates to create and export the mocap, then when importing in Blender a new animated empty is created that includes the door animation. You can use this empty as the pivot point animation for any custom door/panel and create scenes using almost any door model!

Example Scenes

There are two Door Example worlds included in the game, both are scenes are also included in the APS_SDK and are fully playable maps that include the Joint System setup and doors with colliders and the custom Sandbox components needed to build the custom scene. However building a custom scene is not necessary, to understand in more detail why a custom scene would be preferred is another subject but mostly depends on the artist's needs. As a example if all you needed was to create a animation of kicking a door open you could totally use the already included example scenes to generate the animations then adapt them to almost any scene, but if the goal is to create a animation where the avatar walks through multiple doors where each door is arbitrarily located, then building a custom scene, or using the examples and copying the example doors to the new locations would be necessary. 

There are two workflows when recording doors in APS. the general workflow is to simply use the existing door maps provided with APS to record the simulation, then export the mocap to Blender and rig the animated empty to a existing door model by moving the custom scene to align with the example door then simply set the parent of the new door to the animated empty. The second more advance workflow is to build a custom scene that includes doors which allows more flexibility and the ability to add any number of doors located anywhere in the scene (more on the advanced workflow later). 

For most users it should be adequate to simply use the existing door examples to generate the animation and replace the exported door models with custom door models.

Both examples can be found in the APS_SDK, the blends are included with the game. You can build on these scene examples to get started quickly!

If the existing door scenes are not what's needed you can setup a custom door using the APS_SDK. There are already two fully setup demo scenes included in the APS_SDK you can use as templates. If you'd like to modify the behavior of the existing doors to create entirely new simulations. You can also find the .blends for both maps so you have the ready-to-render scenes, of course you can edit the scene to create a new atmosphere, but keep the door alignment then it's really simple to export mocap and apply it to your custom Blender scenes.

Recording Door Simulations

When recording avatar mocap starts the doors also record animation keyframes, when playing the recorded scene back you should see the avatar and door animations are synced.

Physics Modes

There are two collision modes that allow the avatar to interact with doors. 

• Ragdoll Collisions - This mode is enabled by default . The avatar simply pushes the door with infinite force and the door will react to any body collider.

• Physics Collisions - When you enable the Hand Physics or Feet Physics toggles the avatar will react to the door's mass, eg. knock without instantly pushing the door open.

As mentioned in the first tutorial above "a important note is how the feet did not react to the door when the SWAT avatar kicked it open", this is because only the default ragdoll collisions were used. If you wish to add reaction force to the feet or hands you can enable the Hand Physics or Feet Physics options in the avatar profile menu.

Check out the Heavy Doors Video and notice how the hands physics collisions are enabled so doors with mass gives the appearance of being difficult to open. 

Scene Widgets

Helper UI overlays that are placed over the Sandbox components around the scene, such as doors and allows adjusting in-game parameters and changing the behavior of the door, or for locking the recorded door animations when creating multi-avatar scenes. There is more discussion about the use of the scene widgets in the Heavy Doors example video!

You can download the tomb door example scene from the Workshop and even includes the textured .blend for final rendering :)

Hinge Joints

Joint Handles

Showcases

A collection of all of the rendered animations: