[Fwd: Re: [ODE] Ragdoll characters with ODE]

[James Golding]

Hi Thomas,

We used the Karma physics engine for ragdolls in Unreal Tournament 2003. You used KAT (Karma
Authoring Tool) to set up the collision geometry, masses, joint limits etc. Each rigid body then has
a name which matches a graphics bone name for rendering, and we generally used sphyls (aka capsules)
and spheres for collision geometry. One limitation was that you couldn't 'skip' bones in the
graphics hierarchy (although you could remove things like fingers). When your character dies, it
initialises all the rigid body positions from the graphics bones position and starts simulation. The
ragdolls in UT2003 had about 15 rigid bodies.

There are some docs here:

http://udn.epicgames.com/pub/Content/RagdollsInUT2003/

KAT is on the 3rd CD of UT2003, if you have it. From what I know, ODE and Karma are fairly similar -
so a similar approach might work for you!

James

Thomas Grimes wrote:
> I was wondering if anyone could either tell me or show me a link that 
> talks about how to setup a model, say a model using bones and all that 
> like doom 3 does for example, using ODE to make this model have ragdoll 
> like physics, as seen in doom 3 and HL 2. I was thinking that maybe what 
> you have to do is for each limb and torso of the model (assuming it's a 
> person or something similar) assign a cyllinder which ODE knows about 
> and assign a sphere where the head is and connect all of these together 
> with joints. Is this how this is done or is there a better way? Thanks.
> 
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