GSoC 2012 – Bullet Integration Progress Video 1

Bart · July 5, 2012

Sergej Reich is working on the Bullet integration project for the Google Summer of code. In this progress video he demonstrates the new workflow that this will enable. And boy, you’re gonna love it!

Sergej writes:

My attempt at showing the current state of the Bullet integration in Blender. I hope you can understand me, I’m not used to do presentations in English.
For more information you can take a look at my wiki page and BlenderArtists thread.
You can find the code either in Joshua’s or my git branches, and there are also builds available at graphicall.org.

About the Bullet Integration project:

Synopsis
This project aims at continuing the work done by Joshua Leung for the Google Summer of Code 2010, integrating the Bullet physics library natively into Blender so users don’t have to go through the clumsy process of running their simulations inside blenders game engine.

Deliverables

A simple way to setup stable rigid body simulations.
The ability so bake the simulation.
Ways to control the simulation via constraints, forces and the animation system.
End-User Documentation.

Author Bart

I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Community Lead at n8n.

48 responses

Jonathan Lax

5 July 2012 at 11:37

Sexeh!!

DimitrisC

5 July 2012 at 12:07

Keep up the great work Sergej!
We need this in Blender asap!!!

Karlis Stigis
5 July 2012 at 14:36
YES!
Reply

ping0

5 July 2012 at 12:37

There are also alternatives if you can’t wait for bullet. Use PyODE + python scripting in blender.

But it is not for the faint of heart (installing everything so PyODE can work is the bigger challenge here).

This is definitely better but it has been a long time coming…

Roberto Abella
7 July 2012 at 02:13
Do you know of any Newton Game Dynamics implementation like that that you mentioned for ODE?
Reply
1. ping0
  7 July 2012 at 08:12
  There is a python interface for Newton called newpy. But I have not tried it. If it works it will be as simple to use as typing “import newpy”. Le 7 juil. 2012 03:13, “Disqus” a écrit :
  Reply
  1. Roberto Abella
    7 July 2012 at 23:36
    Thanks ping0!!
    Reply

@mrCrabs

5 July 2012 at 12:51

yuck! Vimeo.

Karlis Stigis
5 July 2012 at 14:36
Vimeo has much more great content.
Reply
sergof
6 July 2012 at 00:06
youtube wouldn’t let me post it because of the length.
So vimeo ftw!
Reply
1. Karlis Stigis
  6 July 2012 at 15:57
  Vimeo is cool.
  Reply

David

5 July 2012 at 13:01

Awesomeness!

Karlis Stigis

5 July 2012 at 13:53

I am waiting for this so much!

PickleJones

5 July 2012 at 14:25

Thank you! I love doing simulations and have learned my way through the workarounds in the BGE. This looks like it will make things much simpler and easier to incorporate multi-physics, like burning rigid body meets fluids. Fun times!

Josemaria RRA

5 July 2012 at 14:35

niiiiiiiiiceee!!!
I was wondering if you we’re going to be able to give dynamics to bones (with influence control, preferably). Like, for example, to use on a floppy tail of a character, so that the animator doesn’t have to animate the tail every time the character moves.

sergof
6 July 2012 at 00:04
I would like to make things like that possible but there are tricky issues that have to be resolved first so I cannot give a definitive answer atm.
Reply
1. Josemaria RRA
  6 July 2012 at 05:13
  that would be amazing! Thanks for the answer.
  Reply

Kirado

5 July 2012 at 14:38

very cool, great progress, but I wouldn’t hide any physics settings away like collision margins, being able to tweak those is very important for simulation accuracy, also try and use terms already used in the game engine bullet integration (which was created by the creater of bullet)

sergof
6 July 2012 at 00:02
I understand where you’re coming from but the game engine has different requirements so trying to be compatible is not worth it.
Regarding the margin, take a look here: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Sergof/GSoC2012/Design#Collision_Margins
Reply

Brian Lockett

5 July 2012 at 15:13

I read the title, I scrolled down to give this a star rating, and then I proceeded back up to read the article.

Stephen Firman

5 July 2012 at 15:23

Great work! This is so cool!

encn

5 July 2012 at 15:27

I love the “animated” checkbox! So much more versatile than mucking about with “initial angular velocity/spin” and such. And a great match for Blender’s wonderful realtime animation-recording.

NyanNyan

5 July 2012 at 20:13

Are there plans to support chained rigid bodies, like chains, a ragdoll or something? One of my main problems is to combine physics with armatures, without using softbodies or cloth parts as the goal for the armature. Personally i dream about some simple physics and collision features for armatures.

sergof
5 July 2012 at 23:52
Adding constraints is on my TODO.
How we’ll deal with armatures isn’t clear yet but I’ll see what I can do.
Reply
1. Jonah
  6 July 2012 at 04:43
  nice! that was my exact question.
  Reply
2. nyannyan
  6 July 2012 at 09:05
  That’s really nice to hear and would be awesome. Finally i could get rid of building rigid bodies for the game engine, setting it up properly and recording animation curves just for this purpose.
  Reply
3. Karlis Stigis
  6 July 2012 at 15:55
  I am SO excited!
  Reply

TheElwolf

5 July 2012 at 20:31

” from Dev meeting 1 July 2012” Quote-Campbell Barton is working on recursive voronoi fracture; based on initial Phymec code – but he decided it would be more efficient to re-implement it in Python entirely as add-on. Should be finished and documented in a week. -end quote

My question is; will the Bullet Integration be compatible with the upcoming plugin Campbell is working on.

Campbell Barton
5 July 2012 at 22:52
yes
Reply

Kirill Poltavets

5 July 2012 at 23:05

Another “white spot” on the map of Blender’s universality will be painted out soon! :D I’m glad it will be compatible with cell_fracture addon!
Thank you, Sergej and Campbell!

vidjo

6 July 2012 at 00:20

This is fantastic. Dont be shy. We DO want to see more. I’d like to know everything thats going on with this. Great work and cant wait to see more.

Raul

6 July 2012 at 01:14

Great job! a very timely question is whether the bullet and integrating with the engine, we can combine it with the trackin chamber, ie if I have a real video where I want to destroy several buildings, as if the trackin ago with the game engine I can not do this thanks and I hope to answer, excuse my clumsy English.

Raul

6 July 2012 at 01:20

finally the building is in graphicall this only for mac, there is a version for windows?

Ben_Lind

6 July 2012 at 01:25

Great stuff! This will definitely be useful. Thanks!

hello

6 July 2012 at 02:05

Can’t see comments from Disqus, couldn’t even create a comment before I enabled “Send Referrer Information” in my browser.

Nick

6 July 2012 at 05:46

Awesome awesomeness! Hard body physics has been the biggest hole since it disappeared (4.9 I think).

Marc Driftmeyer

6 July 2012 at 07:00

Very useful for both FEA/CFD simulations to games and everything in between. It would be nice either to work on preparing videos that zoom in on the areas of menu controls that are actually visible and legible [blurry even on a 24 HP LP2475w display] and actually spend time pairing down your commentary to focus solely on what you plan to discuss and not to tangentially bring in thoughts that have zero impact on the point of one’s presentation.

Per Nyblom

6 July 2012 at 08:11

I love this!

Beau

6 July 2012 at 08:37

I love you guys for making this! Bravo!

Christos Georgakas

6 July 2012 at 09:38

Iam dreaming of the day that i will be able to use physics with text (well since iam a motion designer) without pain! i really liked the animated box option and also the tricks to remove the “noise” of the still rigid objects.

Erwin Coumans

6 July 2012 at 14:54

Cool, I look forward to try it out. I’m currently working on the OpenCL accelerated version of Bullet and Blender will be the first modeler integration.

onjoFilms

6 July 2012 at 16:31

I found the bullet physics pretty cool and work quite well. Here’s a small movie made with it: http://youtu.be/1EEC1i9wsGU

vegan

6 July 2012 at 16:49

I wonder if you can “bake” this bullet animation. Then you could render it in some other Blender build. When it gets to the official build, of course, it won’t be needed, but in the meanwhile…