with its integrated game engine blender could be an ideal machinima tool!
2.41 with the improved game engine will be out soon…
i haven’t used the game engine before and have some questions.
how versatile is the game engine’s animation system? can it mix different animations? does it support shape keys? can i trigger animations with key presses?.. how hard is it to get characters walking around in a scene? is the collision detection (does this use the new bullet physics?) robust enough?.. can bullet already do vehicles? and other constraints like hinges?
would be cool to be able to control some characters like puppets in realtime, bake their motions and finally use blenders renderer.
let’s see…
very versatile…yes, but only for armatures…don’t think so…yes, of course…not very…it’s very good… not sure…you don’t need constraints, just animate it that way.
i have looked into some of your nice demos. i think it looks promising for what i want to do. do you have an tips (docs, tutorials,…) for getting started?
There’s lots of good documentation online. You can find it through blender3d.org or through blender’s help menu. My advice is to learn as much as you can from the docs, then start a simple project. Don’t try anything really complicated at first. Make a simple game where you have to find ten marbles or something. Come here and ask for help as you need it.
i managed to make a simple cube moveable on a plane controlled by the cursor keys. i use 2.41 rc2 on windows and the cube is very jittery. it continuously sinks into the ground a little and pops up again. can this be fixed somehow? (that’s what i meant with good collision detection.) i use [actor] and [dynamic] and not [rigid body] for the cube.
A couple of the Bullet physics requests are not there yet, its work in progress:
Bullet has no native vehicle support yet. I have a prototype, but it needs more work.
A python-based vehicle can already be done in 2.41, I might provide that.
there is some bug in the static triangle mesh collision at the moment, will fix that after 2.41 release.
Just point to point constraints so far, work in progress. Hinges, ragdolls are future possibilities. Like blendering animation with physics.
Getting the game kit, looking at demos and browsing this forum will get you up to speed.
