| Q&A |
 PAL,
Adrian Boeing
nov. 2007 |
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"3D
artists are able to take advantage of the PAL technology,
through any application that supports PAL. The primary
advantage for artists and animators will be the ability
to select the underlying physics engine which provides
the most visually pleasing results. In this way artists
are able to get more control over how objects should
react and move in their game or animations.
For
example, an animator may wish to animate a wall being
hit by a cannon ball. The results from one physics engine
might not give the results an animator wants. Too many
of the bricks in the wall may be flying in the wrong
direction. By switching to a different physics engine,
the animator can get more control over how the bricks
will move."
<
Each image is generated at the same point in time, however
each engine provides a different result. |
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| Q1 |
Could
you please give a brief description of PAL? |
| A1 |
The
Physics Abstraction Layer (PAL) defines a open standard API
for exchanging physically based animation content between different
content creation packages and physics engines. |
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| Q2 |
PAL
offers a unique interface for most of the OpenSource engines.
What about commercial products such as Havok? |
| A2 |
Most
open source physics engines are supported by PAL, (Bullet, JigLib,
ODE, OpenTissue, Tokamak) and PAL supports a number of commercial
products as well, including AGEIA PhysX, Newton Game Dynamics,
and True Axis Physics. However, PAL does not currently support
Havok. We hope to add Havok support to PAL in the future. |
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| Q3 |
What
are the relations between Collada and PAL? Can PAL be used without
Collada? |
| A3 |
COLLADA
is one of the file formats compatible with PAL. PAL itself can
be used without COLLADA, either through its own XML file format,
or through the Scythe file format, or directly by a custom application.
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| Q4 |
Is
PAL for developers or for 3D artists? |
| A4 |
PAL
is for anyone who wishes to make physically based animations,
this includes developers, researchers, animators and other 3D
artists. However PAL is primarily targeted at software developers.
3D
artists are able to take advantage of the PAL technology,
through any application that supports PAL. The primary advantage
for artists and animators will be the ability to select the
underlying physics engine which provides the most visually
pleasing results. In this way artists are able to get more
control over how objects should react and move in their game
or animations.
For
example, an animator may wish to animate a wall being hit
by a cannon ball. The results from one physics engine might
not give the results an animator wants. Too many of the bricks
in the wall may be flying in the wrong direction. By switching
to a different physics engine, the animator can get more control
over how the bricks will move. |
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| Q5 |
Is
it possible to generate PAL files directly from DCC software
such as Maya, 3dsmax or XSI? |
| A5 |
Since
PAL provides support for a number of file formats it is possible
to use PAL with any software that supports COLLADA physics or
the Scythe physics format. Softimage XSI has native COLLADA
support and Feeling Software provides COLLADA plug ins for both
Max and Maya. There is a number of other DCC software available
with COLLADA support, such as Blender and Houdini. Scythe support
is available for 3ds files and Wavefront obj files, so any DCC
software that can export to 3ds, obj, or COLLADA can take advantage
of PAL. |
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| Q6 |
Is
PAL opensource? |
| A6 |
Yes,
PAL is opensource and released under the BSD license. This means
it is free to use in commercial applications. You can download
the source code and example applications from the PAL website
http://pal.sourceforge.net/
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| Q7 |
What
is the future of PAL, can it be included in DCC softwares or
3D engine ? |
| A7 |
The
PAL project is always growing and expanding, and we hope to
see PAL directly integrated to a number of DCC packages and
3D engines in the future. |
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