[ODE] fxengine

[Anselm Hook]

> What kind of scenegraph are you using there?
> We're integrating an updated version of Cal3D (procedural animation) with
> OpenSceneGraph and an in-house behaviour engine (the plan is to
> make it open source as soon too).

OpenSceneGraph seems to be the best one out there.  OpenSG is complicated.
None of the other Inventor clones seem very good.  Java3D requires Java.
Steve Bakers PLIB and SSG do not take enough advantage of C++.  For right
now I'm just using my own which although not doing culling is good enough
for me.  I use Lib3ds to load graphics and Cal3D loads puppets.

> As our next step (in a few months) we have been planning to work
> on a dynamics version of Cal3D too, so your work is really well timed :)

That sounds great - you'll probably accomplish more than I am doing right
now!  I'd be very excited to see it.

> When will your dynamics driven biped code be released?

Well, I've married Lua to ODE so that I get a script based interface to
ODE.  That means that ordinary humans can fiddle with ODE environments
more easily.  But I'm still not happy with that.  What I think I really
need is a visual scripting tool that lets me drag and drop collision
hulls, dynamic bodies and graphic objects around and place them properly.
My schedule for that isn't determined yet.

Dynamically driving a biped is going to be nasty work - probably
impossible actually. ( Most people use a kinematics based model and
translate kinematic displacement into equivalent dynamic forces.)  I have
no aspiration to make a dynamics driven puppet - I'm just working on tools
for dynamics 'assisted' kinematics authoring - ultimately my code will
spit out a sequence of key-frames.

-a