I need to create a length of rope which can be used to pull physics objects around. Is this possible with jME?
Yes its possible. You will have to come up with your own implementation of rope physics, or chain together many small physics node to give the effect of the rope. I believe there is a test in jME physics which chains a bunch of objects together and you drop things on it to break it. Also, the physics picker might give you some inspiration.
Hmm. How difficult do you think it will be to create my own implementation of a rope? I'm thinking of chaining thousands of sphere objects together. Is this even viable? It would mean me having a LOT of objects on the screen at once, with all the physics interactions etc. Any thoughts? Has anyone else done anything similar before? It seems like a fairly common thing to want to use…
You don't need thousands of spheres. A bunch of nodes will provide a quite realistic feeling.
To simulate that you could use JMEPhysics, although you need some degree joints with 3 rotational axis… I don't know if that's possible.
For the graphic part… I guess you could use a trimesh which you would manipulate to fit your physics simulation, but for a start, some simple lines or cylinders between nodes would do it.
jjmontes said:
To simulate that you could use JMEPhysics, although you need some degree joints with 3 rotational axis... I don't know if that's possible.
Yes, setup ball joints or a universal joints.