[ODE] OpenDE for an FPS ??

[Damien Miller]

david@csworkbench.com wrote:

[...]

> You could change the body simulation from a capsule to a more
> articulated structure (different bodies for torso, arms, legs, head, etc)
> when a person was killed to allow for "ragdoll corpses" (maybe, I don't
> think it's been done with ODE yet).  The iterated constraint solver I'm
> close to releasing should simulate even piles of ragdoll corpses fairly
> quickly (again, untested).

This is why I am interested in ODE, though I haven't tried it yet. The question that I have not figured out is how to integrate animation and simulation:

I imagine that one would create a model and some animations in a 3d modelling program, using joints and bones which one would somehow export to a format that ODE can use. I expect that one would also create bouding polys for each bone for use by ODE. 

The problem arises when you set this object loose in the world. One presumably wouldn't want a (for example) human model simulated by ODE _all_ the time - it would probably collapse unless is was carefully tweaked, and any movement would likely send it toppling unless it was actively stabilised. I guess that one would probably forego simulation (apart from collision detection) until something interesting happened.

Does anyone have any suggestions of how this is done in practice?

-d