tutorials

[mirv]

Hi all,
Erm...yeah, just working on my own little project, and it's come time to start thinking about physics. I've really not had any experience with physics programming, but we all have to start somewhere right? Anyway, thought I'd take the plunge and start to integrate bullet into my project (possibly under a wrapper layer, as I want to try PhysX as well), and have noticed a little lack of tutorials. So would anybody like me to try create some as I learn?
I'll basically be going through all the samples, do some SDL sample apps of my own as I learn, that kind of thing, but if anyone would like me to write & maintain some tuts to help other newbies, please let me know. Otherwise I'll only have the motivation to learn for myself. I have some pages.google space, so I can put stuff up there, but again I'll only be motivated enough if other people would like me to (not that I'm lazy, just easily distracted by my own thing).

[Erwin Coumans]

(I moved your topic, it is Bullet specific)

That would be useful.

I can give you some space on the Wiki page, and you can add some tutorials there (and link to your tutorial files etc.)

http://www.continuousphysics.com/mediaw ... =Main_Page

Thanks,
Erwin

[mirv]

Well I started on a "hello world" type app, just to learn everything, but I'm kinda stuck on something.
I know I can get a demo going, and use it to explain a lot, but I'm not sure when PHY_ShapeProps is used instead of CcdConstructionInfo (the former is present in ccdphysicsdemo, but not actually used, I think). As far as I can tell, each contains much of the same information. Aside that the "ccd" is used for continuous collision detection, where as PHY_ShapeProps seems more geared towards an actual physics response, am I right? Basically the ccd part for finding when objects collide, and PHY_ShapeProps for what happens after that?
I am quite tired, and apologise if something is glaringly obvious, maybe I'll see more in the morning, but I find it never hurts to ask anyway.

Thanks for the encouragement btw!

[nomad]

I'm new to Bullet, and I would be very interested to see some tutorials - I've been using ODE up to now, but I need CCD and Bullet looks very promising
If Bullet works for me, I'll be happy to put a few tutorials together as well (using Irrlicht for rendering)

[mirv]

Me again.
I've done a "hello world" sort of program (one box hitting another), and just need to clean up the code and make up a html page. Unfortunately, that'll probably take until tuesday, as I have to go away for a couple of days.

[nomad]

Eagerly awaiting your hello world app

[mirv]

car troubles, got back later than I thought I would be.
I'll get it up tomorrow instead - sorry for the delay.

[mirv]

http://garry.rank.googlepages.com/Bullet_tutorial1.zip

I use visual c++ express 2005, and have included the appropriate files for that, but you'll need to modify some of the include paths, etc, to suite your own setups.

I was going to do a html page, but as I suck at them (not much flair for design of web pages I'm afraid) I've just put all the comments into the source code.[/url]

[nomad]

I'll set this up for VC6 and see how it all works. This looks like a really good starting point for Bullet programming, nicely commented. That really helps idiots like me.

[nomad]

Thanks mirv. Worth mentioning the pre-built .exe did not run, got a 'application configuration incorrect' dialog. I guess that's a VC express issue.

[mirv]

Hmm, I think that's because of the vc runtime version coupled with the pre-built being a debug version. I'll poke at it a little and test it out on some friends' computers.
Thanks!

[digitalguru]

Hello, guys! I have made a Makefile to build the "Hello World" tutorial under the Linux. It works! Great!

Feel free to download it here:
http://digitalguru.sourceforge.net/wack ... make.patch

[mirv]

Awsome, thanks for all the feedback!
I'm working on #2, and some changes to #1 (namely deleting what should be deleted - as bullet grows, I'm sure things like that will change), adding in that makefile, etc etc etc.
Anyways, #2 will basically extend #1 to include a constraint (to make a swinging pendulum) and draw the points of object collision. I just need to clean up the code a little, and write proper comments - hopefully I'll have that done tomorrow some time, but no promises.

Oh, and I think the build options I'm using are a little off - hence the reason for the errors from the precompiled binary. I suspect it's because of the wrong options when importing bullet into vc++ express actually, so I'll keep working at it!

-- Uh, sorry for extra delay, I found out what restitution does, and have been mucking around with it, and trying to get things compiling nicely. Might just provide tutorials without a built-in binary, and complaints about that?

[mirv]

Finally got around to putting it online - let me know of any bugs, criticism, etc etc etc.
Linux makefiles are not yet included, mainly because I've not tested them myself (I'm lazy and have only just fixed my boot loader after a windows reinstall) but they're coming soon.
I've actually made slight adjustments to tutorial 1 (the includes section), and so have packed it in along with tutorial 2.

http://garry.rank.googlepages.com/Bullet_tutorial2.zip

-- Edit: hopefully the link works now.

[shellrie]

When I clicked the link for bullet_tutorial2.zip, I got a 404 error page saying the page could not be found. Is there any other place I can download the package? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

-Chris