[ODE] Introduction / Suggestions etc

[Alan Gordie]

Hi Mal!

Well, perhaps it's time for me to de-lurk... (due to the mention of ODE
integration with Blender)

My name is Alan Gordie and I've been steadily building a robust, spring-mass
simulation engine (http://gordie.go.dyndns.org/) for simulating vehicles and
structures for fun.  Contemplating the GPL release of Blender, I'd been
toying with the idea of grafting my sim code into/onto Blender, but that
would be pointless if ODE were to be integrated with Blender.

At any rate, I've been following ODE (and the mailing list) for awhile now
and find myself continually more impressed with its' progress as time goes
on. (Thanks to Russ and the rest of you!)  It seems to me that ODE has
reached 'escape velocity' in terms of project growth and community support.
Don't get me wrong, I think there is huge potential, but it seems like it
has enough momentum now to easily move to the next level.

And the point is:  Now, after the release of the Blender source, I've
decided to contribute in any ways that I can in terms of adding my
spring-mass modeling primitives to ODE, as well as offering development
assistance for the "ODE Plugin" for Blender.  

As Mal mentioned, there are many compelling reasons to add support this
effort, but there is one that stands out for me.  It will ensure that there
is a open-sourced, freely-available tool suite for rigid body simulation.

So, who else is interested in devoting some time to the ODE/Blender effort?
I've been hanging around in #ode on EFNET since it was announced a few days
ago, but there hasn't been much activity.  If there are enough interested
parties, I'd like to propose that we hook up on irc to start drawing up a
set of plans.  Any takers?

Alan

alan_gordie@payformance.com
alangordie@attbi.com


-----Original Message-----
From: Malachy Duffin [mailto:mal@candomultimedia.com]
Sent: Friday, October 18, 2002 9:50 AM
To: ode@q12.org
Subject: [ODE] Introduction / Suggestions etc


Hello all,

<INTRO>

Mal here from canDo Multimedia, an Irish 3D interactive development
company.  We are using a lot of Shockwave 3D at the moment ( along with
the online Havok engine ) for some web games, which you can see at...

http://www.candomultimedia.com/games/demos.htm

</INTRO>


Firstly, I don't know if many of you on the list know, but ODE will soon
be integrated as a physics option into the realtime 3D engine of the now
open sourced version of Blender ( www.blender.org ).

This is great for a number of reasons...

- It will raise the awareness of open source game related projects like
Blender and ODE.
- More developers will be keen to work on these projects
- Because Blender is cross platform, a lot of work will be carried out
to ensure that ODE is deployed on platforms that it wasn't available on
before
- ODE developers will be able to show what the engine can do online (
Blender has a web plugin )

Blender has a fairly high learning curve, but is a great prototyping
tool ( imagine designing a car, defining it's wheels / suspension / mass
etc and clicking a button to immediately let you drive it around a 3D
world for testing purposes / to let the artists play with parameters etc
).

I am looking forward to seeing a lot more content created this way!  It
makes it more accessible for artists to know how to design content for
physics based games ( using proxies, compound convex objects etc for
optimisations )


One quick suggestion, from the http://q12.org/ode/ode.html website there
doesn't seem to be any updates on news, or any easy way to see examples
of content created with ODE.

A quick revamp with a gallery of examples and links to downloadable
demos would be great, as a lot more people should be checking it out
over the coming months.


Thanks for taking the time to read the post, and I look forward to
reading future postings on this mailing list.

Mal

_______________________________________________
ODE mailing list
ODE@q12.org
http://q12.org/mailman/listinfo/ode