OdeJava tutorials/documentation

Game Mechanics
#1

Where can I find odejava documentation or tutorial ? I want to use OdeJava in my lwjgl game but I don’t know where to start, and how to use OdeJava with OpenGL… I’ve been looking at Xith3D samples or the big Ode official documentation (which explains how Ode works) but it doesn’t tell me how to use it with OpenGL…

Can someone help me ?

Thanks
Chman

#2

OdeJava is still a bit light on the ground for tutorials or documentation at the moment, it’s still a very young API.
As to working with LWJGL or OpenGL, it’s just another call in your render loop.

  • Setup OdeJava to model objects
  • Start render loop
  • Call ode world update (see examples step() function)
  • Render changes to models via OpenGL by getting the changes to the models from OdeJava (i.e postion, rotation, etc)

The hardest bit is finding what all the physics parameter values do and how this effects your models. Most of the time, the objects do nothing or fly off into oblivion before you get to have a look. It’s a bit ‘suck it and see’ at the moment.

#3

Ok, thanks for your help :wink:

That makes things more complicated for setting up a whole scene…

#4

yeah, you can get the basics from looking at the example stuff, so you should be able to set up your scene… but, doing your own stuff- I mean gravity is OK, but what about mass?,friction?,torque? and stuff. The values you give really seem to effect the physics. I’m finding it hard enough to stop my objects boucing around the floor like they are on a bad acid. :-/

#5

I have started some documentation - but only the beginner stuff at the moment - email me directly if you would like to see what I have done so far.

What I would do first in your position is get the current examples working with LWJGL (i.e. port the org.odejava.xith3d.test package and to a lesser extent the org.odejava.xith3d package).

read the javadocs and my forum post on how to do this. Hint - checkout the org.odejava.display package.

You basically have to create a plugin so that Odejava can talk to your display objects. Optionally, you can set it up to view a default view of the odejava geoms (for example rendering a box as a box…) I recommend this as it’s great for visualisation and debugging.

Read this: http://www.odejava.org/javadoc/org/odejava/display/package-summary.html

Some “binding” related forum topics:
http://www.java-gaming.org/cgi-bin/JGNetForums/YaBB.cgi?board=physics;action=display;num=1080816410
http://www.java-gaming.org/cgi-bin/JGNetForums/YaBB.cgi?board=physics;action=display;num=1078922931

Odejava is ODE really - you need to learn how ODE works and there is some great documentation on that thanks to Russ. Then you need to learn how Odejava uses ODE (if indeed you want to use the high level api and not just hte low level api). It’s fairly intuitive and we are trying to make it as close as object orientationaly possible.

Subscribe to the ODE mailing list too.

http://opende.sourceforge.net/

If there’s something you can do in ODE but not Odejava (old since fixed example: Mult-Geoms in a group) - hassle us or code it yourself :slight_smile:

I am considering setting up Odejava.org the same as xith.org. Would anyone be interested in helping contribute content such as tutorials and examples to the site?

Cheers,

Will.

#6

Many thanks for your help ! Very usefull !!!

About the tutorials, I think I will make some on “how to use it with lwjgl” when I will be able to write correct OdeJava code :wink: