[ODE] Natural motion

[Russ Smith]

> I would like to know if any of you know a bit about NaturalMotion and
> their Active Character Technology. It sounds rather convincing,
> impressive, promising and a whole range of wonderful things.

i just took a look at their demo movies. i think it's mostly kinematically
specified poses that are used to set target positions for joints in a
dynamical skeleton. in other words, this is only slightly different from a
floppy rag doll. in particular, i see no evidence that the virtual
characters react to their environment (i.e. no "AI" at all) - it's telling
that most of the demos consist of the characters moving to pre-specified
poses and then falling down.

the graphics are very nice though, and i think it's easy to mistake good
graphics for good AI (because the character already looks "more real").
the stuff on their web site about how this is "new" don't really hold up
from what i have seen. my conclusion: nothing too interesting here yet.

it would be *quite* easy to do the same thing in ODE. will someone take up
the challenge?

russ.

--
Russ Smith
http://www.q12.org/