This looks interesting. Integrates with Maya etc.
http://www.ai-implant.com/ai_blog/ai_video_blog/gdc_2007__ai_for_massive_destruction_video_now_available.htm
Havent checked out the vid yet as Im on dialup.
There was also a character skinning article on gamasutra that may help some people.
AC
This would be great to incorporate into Unity… automatic, dynamic pathfinding.
Is that a pipe dream?
Emil “AngryAnt” has worked (or is working) with it.
He’s not been active around here for a while, but if anyone sees him we should ask him to chime in (he works in the same building as we, but I almost never see him).
d.
I first discovered AI.implant in may 05 and we got us a license in december 05 I believe.
The software was originally created for the movie industry, but with the increase in computational power it was moved to real-time computer games as well. This gives AI.implant the advantage of having lots of features optimised for quality rather than performance, as their competitors originating in the game development environment are.
This means you get very high quality which has now been optimised for game development, but sacrifice some of the extra - directly game related features. Simply: AI.implant should be viewed as excellent quality software for pathfinding and obstacle avoidance, no more or less.
An example of a popular and typical competitor could be Kynogon - the original AI engine of the Renderware game engine. This engine is optimised to run on minimal processor share and output quality is therefore severely crippled compared to that from AI.implant - a glance on the demos available from both engines will quickly verify this. What Kynogon offers extra is some common behavioural AI already built in plus limited environment analysis.
For implementation AI.implant is easy to get up and running. The engine originates as a physics engine and is therefore implemented just like one, meaning you hook up AI.implant in your game tick to update the object info into the AI simulation, tick the simulation and update the result back. Just like any physics engine. Of-course more advanced features need to be more tightly knitted with the engine, but hello-world is achieved rather easily.
I’d certainly recommend AI.implant based on its quality and how well I find it would integrate with the rest of Unity, based on what I’ve seen.
Thanks for the feedback Ant. Its a kind of scary thing to see a computer starting to “think”…It looks like theres no mac version, so we’ll look at whats around, including Kynogon. Theres nothing demanding an Ai solution right now but its good to get an understanding.That was a good explanation.
Cheers
AC
The thing is portable as hell. Linux, Win32, PS3, Xbox360 so it shouldn’t be that hard to compile for OS X.