Physics Illustrator
Tablet PC talk- There are free programs available at the Microsoft website that are specifically developed for the Windows XP Tablet Edition operating system. Under the Power Toys section you can locate and download a program called Physics Illustrator which allows you the user to draw objects, designate what material they are comprised of and modify their physics in various fields of friction and bounce etc. When you are done establishing the coordinates, drawing arrows for their direction, and connecting pieces together, you can then click the animate button to see the calculated end result. This program will entertain those of you with an interest in well, physics and you will lose track of time trying to get the objects to do exactly what you want. I would however like to see this program worked on a little more as it has the potential to be a fully functional program, but not as it is. My biggest complaint is that I would like to be able to export the .physi files as .mov's or .avi's for website viewing or merging with animations created by other programs. There are not a whole lot of resources online for Physics Illustrator but where they are - I have been.......... unfortunately without finding a solution. In spite of missing a few fundamental physics forces and the file saving issue Physics Illustrator is worth the free download and is a lot of fun to play with.
The Physics Illustrator source code is available here.
posted by Gina @ 2:09 PM
4 Comments:
Hello Gina- have you tried using screen-capture? There is a utility, Fraps (from the author of Milkdrop) that interfaces with the graphics card using DirectX to capture video without much overhead, and there is also the manual-override method use by other applications that works much like print-screen. Have a look here for some freeware apps: http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php?form_cat=126
I actually don't have a Tablet around to try this out, at the moment. I wonder if there is any Emulator. Although, you've also got Reactor in Max for similar rigid body simulations, along with scripting, vector-fields,etc and of course particles.
Cheers.
Screen capture was something I considered, but as you know printscreen is to slow to catch the speed of the frames. I am however very impressed with the Fraps program you suggest. I'm assuming that the demo version leaves it's watermark imprint? Perhaps I will investigate your link to similar freeware programs........ do you have an idea as to which one is of equal quality to Fraps? Yes, Max is also much more accurate than Physics Ill, but the fun thing about PI is that it's 2D and instant - I love my Max more, but PI is fun in a simplified and different way. Thank you so much for sharing these options with me.
I bought Fraps - waiting for the reg email. I'll let you know how it works out. Thank you!
I just installed Fraps on the Tablet PC without any problems. However when I run Physics Illustrator and press the f9 hotkey to record and then again to stop recording, there is no saved file nor do I see the frame rate counter that is mentioned in the help menu. Either it doesn't work with the program or I have some setting wrong.
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