ODE RagDoll Editor and IK Tool

Community Forums/Showcase/ODE RagDoll Editor and IK Tool

Ricky Smith(Posted 2005) [#1]
Just completed the ODE RagDoll Editor for PaceMaker. It also has an really useful IK tool also powered by ODE. Its way better than the IK Tool in CharacterFX and extremely stable.

First Load a boned Model and set the joint parameters or just go with the defaults:



Choose an anchor joint(s) Then Click on the "RagDoll" button. Hang that Zombie by his foot and let him dangle.





Or hang him by an arm...



When happy with the results export to Blitz3d source. The joint physics information is saved to the .b3d file as a custom node so will always be available when loading into PaceMaker.


slenkar(Posted 2005) [#2]
sounds good,
how, for example would you set up a human to react properly to getting shot in different places.


Ricky Smith(Posted 2005) [#3]

for example would you set up a human to react properly to getting shot in different places.


lol - First of I would tell him to stop visiting those neighbourhoods and then I would say to him that as long as he has one leg left he can still hop to safety.....
Sorry - couldn't resist.

Every joint is represented by a rigid body. You can apply a force or torque to any joint to simulate an impact.
How realistic the movement is depends on what the joint type and limits are.
A possible method - If you know the vertex/joint assignment then you can check the nearest vertex to the picked/collision coordinates. You can then find the joints that need to be manipulated. You could even distribute the force between several joints if the vertex was assigned to more than one joint according to its weighting values.
You could also just simply find the nearest joint to the picked/collision coordinates ,that would be less accurate but would probably be sufficient in most scenarios. Calculate force direction using collision/picked normals.
Something along those lines .....

I hope to be adding a library of functions for parsing .b3d files and creating Type structures of useful information not available at run-time - there are some good ones in the code archives however none of them deal with animation data.


Picklesworth(Posted 2005) [#4]
Looks very well done.


Erroneouss(Posted 2005) [#5]
Sweeeeetnesssss.... I like it!