Just clocking in to say good work! I reckon the permission issue is pretty clear at the top of both the original module and C-file (permission to develop and/or distribute), though there is a sentence lower down that contradicts that. Anyway, I think you’re a mighty man (all brass) for tackling this. I’ll push from behind.
%<
Hi, just trying to help, so sorry if you have already seen this, but on the bottom of this page:
in acknowledgement Colin Withers is the original author, I did a bit of poking around and he used to be Technical Director at Topix, but he then joined Mr. X as Studio Tools Developer:
http://www.mrxfx.com/home.html
there is a general e-mail contact address on thier page:
Also under the crew heading Colin Withers is not shown, I wonder if he left?
Well I hope that maybe helps and that you are not insulted if you already knew this info.
Ken
You’ve done some neat work with this plugin. It is great that you got it to work with arbitrarily defined meshes and not just spheres.
The falling/blowing down the stairs animation looks odd; I think because the wind is comming from behind the stairs and would normally get blocked.
Fligh % - yeah, I think the code is pretty clearly GPL licensed, however the web site says its GPL’ed and then adds restrictions. Not being a lawyer and not knowing topix’s attitude about this and having attempted to contact them muddies the waters for me temporarily.
PS: I’ll refrain from the beans and buritos for your sake Fligh %, :).
kencanvey - Yeah, I tried to track Colin down and found the dead end at mrxfx too. I found a recent reference at topix on him as well though, although it doesn’t appear he’s still there.
As far as offending me, I’m pretty hard to offend, especially when someone is just trying to help.
stephen2002 - Thanks for the compliment, web space and keeping the videos available. I’ll have to go edit my posts to point to the temporary links.
Yeah, the stairs is a complete hack in more ways than one, :). A lot of the system as it stands now is a complete hack, but one that can produce some interesting results. I hope to make some or most of the system much less of a hack as time progresses.
Hopefully this will be resolved early in the week and I haven’t finished anything significant, ability wise anyway, in the code since the last release. So those that have the code pretty much have the current set of abilities.
I got the freecloth demo running and am not that impressed with it so far. I think its a lot slower. Its unclear whether its just poorly written C++, a bad/slower alogorithm or just a generally bad implementation. Also, the cloth tends to crease very badly and it only has one force parameter (gravity) and no support for collisions. An awful lot of work would have to be done to use freecloth from what I can tell now. I’ll give it another look today to insure that my current impressions are right, but I’ll be surpised if my opinion changes.
I read through a few research papers last night and have a few more to look at. Any new work I do from the information in these papers though, will take time. I wasn’t expecting to spend this time now. I was hoping to spend time now on stuff like eliminating some of the hacks and limitations in the topix based implementation.
The secondary server is back up; please update your post.
Keep up the good work with this script. Cloth simulation would be a really “pro” feature to have in the package.
Done, thanks for the notice.
Keep up the good work with this script. Cloth simulation would be a really “pro” feature to have in the package.
Yeah, I’d love to see it too. It has so many applications in its basic form and with tweaks even more. Not to mention the livelyness it’ll add to animations.
So far I’ve deciphered one paper, the original one that topix was based on, and written pseudo code in as close to a clean room environment that I can. Kind of tough though since the files reside next to each other in the same directory, :-). But since I really hadn’t gotten around to looking at the internal workings of the topix implementation of what was in the paper and haven’t done so while reading the paper, I think it’ll be safe to say that my new work won’t be a derivative of theirs.
This is going to take some time to get through though since its basically starting from scratch. I’ll reuse the python code, with changes, so that’ll save some time. Hopefully I can release something all of my own doing in a few weeks. In the mean time, one way or another I should be able to get a last release of the topix based stuff out.
I’ll be posting in this forum a request for comments on the new cloth system I’m writing. I’d do it in this thread, but would like it to be more visible to those that aren’t reading this thread. I’d appreciate any input anyone might have.
Testing now for OSX
Download went poof *
Please email me so I may test it. trip@_NOSPAM_spymac.com remove NOSPAM 
He already explained why he took down the download. Didn’t you read the thread?
Martin
youngbatcat - downloads aren’t available right now, see some of my previous posts as to the situation. In a nutshell, I may not have the right to redistribute the topix part of the code and am trying to clarify the situation and/or get that right. I hope to be able to get something out soon.
Much more discussion on this above.
He already explained why he took down the download. Didn’t you read the thread?
Martin[/quote]
Well obviously not 
What is the problem ? am curious, is it illegal to work on somebody elses code and share it ? Why would they post it in the first place if they did not want anybody to use it ? Why not lock all python scripts then ? Hey while at it why not start charging for the things . I am confused . Don’t mind me, I guess that I was to late to read this thread drat.
Ok, I have to ask this … did you read the thred ? 
Just a hint, SEE MY PREVIOUS POSTS, 
Very very cool! Too bad I’m using OSX… when you get everything worked out with TOPIX, then can you somehow have it made for Mac?
link is broken!!
Hey,
Just wanted to bring this thread back to the top.
Zaz have you heard from topix yet? Will you wait indefinitely to hear from ‘them’ or can we assume after a certain period of time, that they just don’t care?
people, it’s been OVER A YEAR since zaz last posted to this thread, which is a pretty good indication that the project is dead. 
Join the other great, dead projects … like The Beast.
Dang, I really wanted to try this out. 
The link doesnt work for me.
This answers your other thread too. Below is the link to the updated Topix for the 2.3x python appi. However, it’s not the same as zaz’s script, but is all that is available for cloth. It’s a ‘proof of concept’ more than a useable solution so don’t expect anything (unless you’re searching for a possible coding project to get yourself involved in).
%<
I’ve been 404’d!