[ODE] ODE used in XSI4?

[Jeffrey Smith]

Aras Pranckevicius wrote:
> I've just found that a new Softimage|XSI4 is released. 

Yes, indeed.  I believe it hits the streets at the end of this month.

> Among it's new features is "rigid body dynamics", and in the
> screenshot:
> http://www.softimage.com/products/xsi/v4/features/media/XSI_v4_Topten2.jpg

Heh.  Good eyes!

> it looks like it's ODE based ("ODESpring16").  Could anyone confirm
> this? (Jeffrey Smith?).

Yes, we are using ODE to do rigid body dynamics in XSI 4.0.  After
looking around at all the available options (Havok, Arachi, ODE, etc.,
as well writing our own), the simulation team decided that ODE offered
the best in terms of price, features, openness, and ease of
integration into XSI.  I pushed for the use of ODE partially because
it's open source which, in addition to the moral and "many eyes"
benefits, will allow our dynamics-intensive clients (like ILM) to
download ODE, change it for their own nefarious purposes, and then
drop it right back into XSI; something they couldn't do with Havok
(unless they bought a source-code license on their own).  I should
also note that the high level of constructive activity on this mailing
list was a big plus in our decision, too.

Much of the work I've been doing for Softimage over the past few
months has been the integration of ODE into XSI, although I've spent a
little time trying to expand the functionality of ODE as well.  After
this release, I hope to do trimesh/trimesh collisions "right." I'm
currently writing some convex decomposition code, as the first step.

> ODE in XSI would be cool, we'd have Havok (Reactor) in 3dsMax, Alias
> priopretary dynamics (I think) in Maya and ODE in XSI :)

I don't know if it's still the case, but at one point Softimage was
thinking of licensing the Havok SDK for the next release (4.5), so
users could use either ODE or Havok for simulation and previs in XSI,
and then use the same engine in their games.  Of course, ODE may drive
Havok out of business by then so who knows?


-Jeff