[ODE] XML Formats

Tue Feb 6 02:17:43 MST 2007

COLLADA is an XML standard format that contains physics information.
It contains collision shapes, rigid body information and constraint 
definition, force field, springs etc. Obviously there is always some 
engine-specific data that is not in the format, and you can extend such info 
in <extra> profile. There are export plugins for Maya, Max (from Ageia) and 
Blender (and soon XSI) that can export the physics data in this format. 
Bullet physics library provides open source physics viewer, importing this 
format, based on COLLADA-DOM / libxml. 

Hope this helps,
Erwin 

Bill Sellers writes: 

> I don't think there is a standard. The various big commercial  
> simulators have their own formats some of which are XML and some of  
> which aren't. There are some XML libraries for ODE but the last time  
> I looked they didn't have enough options to be really useful  
> (certainly in my case) and this is probably because a full simulation  
> needs ODE and several other things that ODE doesn't provide  
> (controllers, springs, graphics, force generators) but that you  
> probably want to include in the XML specification. It then becomes  
> easier to roll your own to add all the extra bits rather than adapt  
> someone else's. I had a play with H-Anim and as I remember it's  
> basically a VRML tree with all the segments specified relative to the  
> previous segment which makes sense but isn't how ODE looks at the  
> world - you end up doing a fair bit of your own geometry to get it  
> all working. H-Anim also doesn't (or didn't) include any inertial  
> properties. However there are various VR/graphics projects that embed  
> ODE and they may have all you need. 
> 
> Cheers
> Bill 
> 
> On 6 Feb 2007, at 04:36, Dave Grundgeiger wrote: 
> 
>> Hi. I'm interested to learn what XML formats are relevant to game  
>> and simulation programming. I did some searching and found X3D and  
>> H-Anim. Are these widely used? Do these formats include the  
>> physical properties of objects or just the display and animation  
>> properties? Is there an XML format specifically for physics  
>> engines? Are there other important XML specs, perhaps for AI or  
>> game scripting? 
>>
>> Thanks! 
>>
>> Dave
>> _______________________________________________
>> ODE mailing list
>> ODE at ode.org
>> http://mooshika.org/mailman/listinfo/ode
> 
> _______________________________________________
> ODE mailing list
> ODE at ode.org
> http://mooshika.org/mailman/listinfo/ode