[ODE] Merging multiple geoms into a single trimesh - a few issues

[Yordan Gyurchev]

> We're probably all going to tailor a solution for our own needs.
> However, if it came to a "common" solution merged into ode, I think
> storing 2 triangle indexes is a more general way to go.
Putting two triangle indices leaves you with no option for putting info
about
non trimesh geoms. If you want you can put the triangle index as well if
you have trimesh but seems very specifc case. You can still implement
your grouped approach for matrials and provide material index.

In my case trimehses a opaque classes I load them from file (including the
AABB) and set them as static geometry... then unload them.. no processing
is done on them. In fact even if there is a animated physics everythign
happens
with transforms outside the trimesh geoms.

> For example, I have materials, but they are grouped, so I can obtain the
> material index in a manner such as this:
>     material 0: index 0 -> 30
>     material 1: index 31->100
> This is a different way than a set of stored material ids per triangle,
> and it would be inefficient to make a huge list of ids that were
> practically identical.
This approach trades space for lookup performance. It all matters on the
size of the material list which I admit is not more than 10 materials
usually.
Complexity of material lookup O(N) where N i number of materials, while
saving TriCount * integer space.
This also asumes that triangles need to be sorted by material in the trimesh
to avoid worst case scenario material searches. So you trimesh is dependent
on your materials anyway noahter reason to put material derivation in the
trimesh class. But I like your approach might change to that.
Its probably also good to look into some DXT like compression for the
material list that supports fast lookups.

> Also, it may be useful to be able to get our hands on the actual
> triangle, for particle systems, breaking glass, etc.
We already do that in a separate way... the particle guy has a separate
callback
that enumerates all triangles in a sphere of influence. Then he handles them
in
a more optimised way than we could in the collision system. In general
I've noticed particle systems + general collision detection != good

Thanks,
Yordan