Is it possible to use current physics system for controlling a character (e.g MD2 model) and not behaving like a box or sphere? which are the parameters for Collision (mu etc)?
what do you mean for controlling the character? DO you mean ragdolls? If so, then ragdolls are currenlty being developed…
Mu is the friction coeffecient, it has nothing to do with controlling anything. Just the friction in the forward direction. Mu2 controls the friction in the normal (i.e. sideway slip).
DP
I think he means "drive" the character, like forward motion, jumping and such, I too am interested n this for my vis, controlling motion, force of contact that kind of thing via physics, might make for some interesting viewing that.
Physics isn’t supposed to do that…Physics isn’t supposed to provide the animation for your characters. If your making some type of killing game, and you want the players to fall correctly when shot at particular places, the physics can do that for you (well, not currently, but it will soon). But as for providing running/jumping/rolling, nope, physics dont do that. All the engines dont.
Why do you think Unreal engine 3 still approximates their characters to bounding boxes? Its very very hard to get proper simulation of characters using physics. Also, think about this, what if you modeled your character to the trimesh level (in terms of physics), your elbow might hit the wall when your walking past and trying to shoot someone. Isn’t that annyoing?
DP
well some of the physics systems are starting toward the trend of allowing you to simply define hinges, bones and such in your model and then taking over the control of standing on uneven surfaces, and even movement… I doubt Per,DP and gang will go that far (or really need to) in thier version 1.0 package.
if you are looking for an autonomously acting character then i suggest to take a look at the verve project: http://www.vrac.iastate.edu/~streeter/verve/main.html 
"DarkProphet" wrote:
Physics isn't supposed to do that...Physics isn't supposed to provide the animation for your characters. If your making some type of killing game, and you want the players to fall correctly when shot at particular places, the physics can do that for you (well, not currently, but it will soon). But as for providing running/jumping/rolling, nope, physics dont do that. All the engines dont.
Why do you think Unreal engine 3 still approximates their characters to bounding boxes? Its very very hard to get proper simulation of characters using physics. Also, think about this, what if you modeled your character to the trimesh level (in terms of physics), your elbow might hit the wall when your walking past and trying to shoot someone. Isn't that annyoing?
DP
Why do you think Unreal engine 3 still approximates their characters to bounding boxes? Its very very hard to get proper simulation of characters using physics. Also, think about this, what if you modeled your character to the trimesh level (in terms of physics), your elbow might hit the wall when your walking past and trying to shoot someone. Isn't that annyoing?
DP
noted, well we live and learn
well some of the physics systems are starting toward the trend of allowing you to simply define hinges, bones and such in your model and then taking over the control of standing on uneven surfaces, and even movement... I doubt Per,DP and gang will go that far (or really need to) in thier version 1.0 package.
Well, I know of a great way to simulate this (its coming people, just wait!!!), but there is one problem. Since the jme-physics is not part of the core, we are not allowed to modify the jme format so that we can load joints/hinges from it. Otherwise, this would be *relatively* easy.
Having said that, if chaosdeathfish's md5 loader is customisable enough, i think we might be able to do it. However, dont expect anything as there might be complications in the design and i would like to get other things off the ground before those.
I HATE features crawling in! hehe ;)
DP
Don’t let them. You can say No. Say it with me… 
My MD5 loader should be customizable enough… if not I can fix it
For ragdolls, do you have any idea what your API is for them yet? PM me when you have that straightened out, and I can work on (or help you with) getting a model to position itself according to the physics code.
Ok, API for Ragdolls:
Skeleton
This is the base class. It contains a simple arraylist full of joints where you can add/remove from them. This is just a data store.
Humanoid
This will create the human character you want and store the information a Skeleton. Notice that Humanoid doesn’t actually extend Skeleton, its a stand alone. A method in there, probably toSkeleton() will obtain you a skeleton.
PhysicsWorld.addSkeleton(Skeleton)
After setting up the humanoin/catoid/alienoid, call this method and all the joints will be added to the world etc. And this will create the joints.
Done!
Thats the plan anyways, the reason we are doing it this way is because its so extendable (IMO). Because if your game requires a custom alien of some sort, you can build that yourself and not rely on us to provide one for you.
DP
Cool… As long as I can get joint positions and rotations out of the Skeleton class every frame, that should be easy to do! Let me know when you have some working code, and I’ll have a play