The PhysX Project

[Allan]

Can't say that I notice much jittering on my monitor, although I have been playing around with the simulation rate. In Test02 the boxes making up the stack do "jitter" slightly at first, but this lessens as the "sleep" mode for each box kicks in.
Anyway, thanks genetransfer, I'll keep an eye open for that one.

[Allan]

PhysX_Test04 was a little on the challenging side. All I have done here is to add a PhysX Convex Hull actor (disguised as a nice shiny gold teapot) and a PhysX MultiShape Actor (the table). I've attached seperate images of both to show how they are composed.
The one problem I had was not realising that the vertices I was importing for the convex hull were unwelded, which led to failures on the PhysX side. After welding them, the problem was corrected. The other problem lay on the 3Impact side, with the volumetric shadow on the teapot producing visible artifacts on rendering. To fix that, I had to produce a shadow model which consisted of closed meshes.

Anyway.........no sphere groups here !

[Developer - Fernando]

Physx looks like a sturdy physics engine indeed and your tests are extremely intersting, thanx Allan!

[genetransfer]

another cool one!very nice!

[Joyful Dreamer]

Hmmm...these demos just crash on my system (Windows 7) right after the "Loading..." message. I have the PhysX system software installed, so that's not it... :/

[Joyful Dreamer]

Never mind, just had to run it as "Administrator", not sure why I have to do that for these simple demos...

Anyhow, works great! Very smooth, I like it.

[Allan]

Its time now to give joints a go........PhysX_Test05 demonstrates the PhysX 6DOF Joint, configured as being translational (or slider) only.
The 6DOF joint has six degrees of freedom (3 translational and 3 rotational) and is a single multi-purpose joint, whereby setting certain combination of flags, can easily be configured to be any type of joint (the main types being: fixed, slider, hinge and ball). In the test demo, a joint has been applied to each of the red, green and blue balls, and there respective poles for sliding along.

[genetransfer]

lov'n these demo's!

[Allan]

I must say that I'm really enjoying this journey........3Impact is a real pleasure to use!

[Allan]

PhysX_Test06 demonstrates rotational movement using the 6DOFJoint.

* The first item in the demo is a rotor which has free rotation around the Y axis. The rotor consists of a multishape actor which has been linked, via a 6DOFJoint (configured as a revolute joint), to a basic cylinder actor. Using the RMB and dragging the mouse applies torque to the joint enabling the rotor to be rotated.

* The second item consists of a ‘rope’ of basic capsule actors joined to each other by 6DOFJoints (configured as spherical joints with limited rotation and a little spring action between joints). The ‘rope’ is attached to the support (a multishape actor) by a 6DOFJoint (configured as a fixed joint) and a basic  sphere actor is attached to the other end of the ‘rope’. Using the LMB and dragging the mouse can manipulate the sphere and ‘rope’ in all directions. An undesirable peculiarity is that the ‘rope’ can ‘stretch’ ( with large gaps forming between the links ! )

* The third item is a simple swing consisting of a mesh as the frame of the swing, and the swing itself consisting of a hull-shape actor. The swing is attached to a global anchor point at the top of the frame, using a 6DOFJoint (configured as a revolute joint with free rotaion about the X axis). Using the RMB and dragging the mouse applies torque to the joint enabling the swing to be swung.