My main goal here is to create a "Polygon Precise Collision." Since newton simply uses a box or sphere method, I need to find another way to do this.

My two Ideas were these:

1) create a pre-compiled map entity...
2) Link several entities together to create one.


In either case, I need to accomplish Idea #2. Does anyone know of a good way to link Newton entities together? I tried using a hinge, but it didn't rotate with the base model...

Any help is appreciated... thankz...

I think we need a version of newton that just works with poly meshes

I'm not sure if the problem is specific to the plugin, or directly within the newton dll's. I am willing to bet it's the plugin not being set up to handle polycollision, but that Newton itself could do it.

Are there any Newton experts know what's going on? Ventilator?

The current newton engine supports polygon precise collision. You can check this from the example apps at http://www.newtondynamics.com/downloads.html, especially the playground. The problem is that the plugin available for GS does not support polygon precise collision. I don't know whether it is the old newton engine upon which the plugin was based or the plugin itself that don't support that feature. Anyway, the new newton engine has a lot of newer features, besides polycollision, that would be great to see implemented in GS, but as long as noone takes the time to build the pluguin/frontend...

As has been concluded in many other posts... we must wait!

As to how you may link/group objects to form more complex collision shapes, using the available plugin and old newton dll, you should have a look at http://www.newtondynamics.com/downloads/NGDdemo.zip. I found somewhere (maybe [censored]?) the plugin installer which also had the source levels and scripts for this app. If you can get your hands on this, you will be able to see how the 'cylindrical' drums were modelled, for example.

sorry that i never finished an updated plugin like i promised but soon there will be lite-c and a plugin won't be necessary anymore then. just some example code and tutorials which show how to use the official newton.dll...

@xXxGuitar511: i don't know what exactly you want to do but i think even with the old plugin you can link several collision objects into a compound collision object.

@Ventilator:
That are absolut great news. Hope that lite-c will come very quickly so that newton will work like in the last SDK with all collision objects.

@ventilator: Do you have any knowledge of how to do this? I tried using a hing, but I couldn't set the omega for it. IDK - I'll keep messin' with it... Thankz...

Will this allow using newton for ragdoll physics on med bones?

no...


ADD: You would have to use seperate models and ball-constraints for that. I'd recommend this:

place your model in the level. Then, create another invisible "skeleton" of the model using newton. Then simply set your models bones to the position of the "skeleton".

Now that lite_c is out, will there be anyone that can present some examples on how to use the latest Newton plugin.

i don't have much time for this at the moment so it would be great if several people could work together.

the first necessary steps would be:

• figure out how to use external dlls with lite-c (<edit> it's described here: http://www.conitec.net/beta/litec_api.htm </edit>)
  
• figure out how to best access the geometry of models (probably the most elegant way would be to access the direct3d mesh buffers of models but i have no experience with this and i it always takes me ages to dig through the microsoft docs. would be great if someone could help here. the other possibility would be to use a c-dll wrapper of mdl7.lib.)
  
• some utility functions for converting between newton matrices and xyz/pan tilt roll/scalexyz (i can provide those)
  

the rest should be relatively easy. it should be just a matter of building more and more elaborate examples/tutorials/templates.