Dear some nerd: Please port the Box2D open-source physics engine to an Adobe After Effects Script
Wednesday, November 21, 2007 at 6:59PM See, first I watched this. Then I downloaded the original Crayon Physics to my XP partition. And then I found this flash demo of the Box2D physics engine used to create that addictive game.
And then I had a full-on Ratatouille flashback to this 2D physics app I used to have on OS 9 called Interactive Physics. I used to have so much fun with that damn app. John Knoll was a fan as well and actually found a way to use motion from it in his ElectricImage animations. A classmate of mine actually created short films using it back in the early '90s when computers were beige. Funny, funny films of bad things happening to little stick figure guys.
So now that a badass 2D physics solver is just sitting there on the interwebs, free for the porting, some enterprising AE genius simply must write a script to animate 2D AE shape and solid layers this way. You'd be a hero to the AE community. Your PayPal donations button would receive literally several clicks. You'd be a man among kings.
C'mon. Do it.
Reader Comments (13)
this is fun to http://sodaplay.com/
-swerve
I'm in for a paypal click and a six pack. I did it for the AE->C4D script. Look at this groundswell of underground support!
Wow! That's the best idea I've heard in a long time!
Anyone who's ever tried animating motion in 2D knows the hassle. So I second this motion. Please some nerd, make this happen =)
//Cartasian (wannabe nerd)
A man among kings? :p
Hmmm.. Well I'm kind of bored this Holiday Eve.. perhaps I'll take a look at the code and see how involved it might be. :)
I know you'd make a lot of people very thankful!
The trick would be to make it aware of the actual shapes of masked solids and/or shape layers.
Next step would be to figure out how to describe attachment points and other links, as well as springs. Could maybe be done with naming conventions such as prefixes... same idea could be used to define starting velocities, etc.
Well, a quick look at the code it looks like it would be a decent sized job. But it certainly is a compelling idea. I'll noodle around with it a bit and see if I can come up with anything.
seems like it would just take the sweat time to figure it out. my coding skills are seriously lacking but id def push a couple paypal clicks someones way who had the wherewithal.
j
i've contacted my local nerd, i'll try to entice him with some cheetos.
man... while you're at it could you please add to cart: http://www.custom-logic.com/exp/cloth/cloth.html
Someone ported it to JavaScript. Maybe it could be used as an expression?
Box2D JS
I did took a look at it a while back and thought how it could be used in AE via expression. Since it's javascript it could be done and might not be too hard, but still a lot of work to make it efficient :)
maybe what could be done first, is to "hijack" the output to a solid position by just calling an expression inside the solid, won't be the easiest way to use it, but I guess it won't be too much work.
Unfortunatly I don't have time to look at it right now :(