Smart body integration?

Smart body integration?

Postby Julius » 17 Jul 2013, 18:10

Just wondering, since you are now using OGRE3D as the renderer and as it would fit quite well to a 3rd person RPG style of game:

Have you thought about integrating this awesome animation system into LoS:
http://smartbody.ict.usc.edu/
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Re: Smart body integration?

Postby amuzen » 18 Jul 2013, 09:13

There are certainly some features that could be useful, but unfortunately the library seems to be far from easy to use.

The main issue is that getting LoS built would become really difficult. The library certainly counts as an obscure dependency since not even its developers package it: you can only it from SVN. The library also has a huge list of dependencies, and the dependency list and the build instructions are hidden inside the huge PDF manual, so most users would likely miss them.

I only took a brief look at the architecture and the source code, but I can see signs of it being difficult to integrate the library. In practice, it's apparently intended to be used either through the stand-alone viewers or the Python API, neither of which are an option for us. Even though there's a C++ API, it's mostly undocumented and doesn't come with a pkg-config file, so it'd be difficult to use it in practice.

The current animation system we have mainly just lacks animations that respond to collisions or positions of other objects. Those would only require a decent IK solver, so I'd rather take a small library that only does IK and does it well. Of course, just stealing the IK solver from SmartBody might be an option, but it doesn't look like it'd be particularly easy to separate.
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Re: Smart body integration?

Postby Julius » 18 Jul 2013, 11:00

Hmm, ok that really sounds like it is not feasible.

Did you raise those concerns in the OGRE3D forum thread? Maybe they are willing to improve those issues, or offer help for integration.
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Re: Smart body integration?

Postby amuzen » 18 Jul 2013, 12:06

I don't think that I really should go complain to them when the issue basically is that their goals just don't match my needs. Their focus seems to be to develop a research-oriented stand-alone framework with everything and the kitchen sink, but I want a simple library that cooperates with Bullet and the existing animation system. The difference is so big that it's not reasonable to go demand anything.

If I'll decide to steal the IK solver, I might suggest that they could modularize it. Beyond that, it'd be just distracting them from what they're supposed to be developing, I think.
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