So who is Alice? Well, I was just browsing around for Python code to keep myself busy, and I stumbled upon a very cool library for 3D called vpython. It is a very simple to use 3D programming library. There are some good videos on how to use it on ShowMeDo. The videos refreshed my physics memory and I was playing around with projectiles, gravity and orbits for hours.Another tool that is much more complex is Panda3D. It is a Disney product that they used for their MMOG Toontown. And then they open sourced it. There is a very cool tutorial by Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center that walks you into creating a world, responding to events and all the usually very complicated stuff very easily using Python.
And then I saw Alice. It is an even higher level drag-n-drop simulation and everything system. It can be very good for teaching computing to kids, or for kids at heart to play around with. Check out what you can do with one of the videos here.
And in case you want to create a game or something, and want some models, alice has tons of objects for you pick and use in your own worlds. Or you can get them in Panda3d format too.
Did I mention all of these tools are free, open source products?
3 comments:
That Alice thing is amazing. I've watched a little of the videos and it makes me sad that I don't have much of creative mind bandwidth for me to embark on such tools. Have you done anything on any of these tools that you would like to share with us Ayman?
Thanks for the post BTW.
Well, nothing earth shattering yet. Just some cosmic scale star collisions and gravity experiments in vpython. I'll try and do some other stuff with Alice or Panda3D, but they seemed a bit too much.
I'll probably be looking at vpython for some 3D data graphs.
My point about the post is that there are some very cool and very sophisticated stuff with Open Source systems, and you can create games, simulations, anything you want with them, without paying a fils.
Plus, it is always good to have "something else", "someting refreshing" instead of TAL and COBOL :)
You are absolutely right about the open source tools. I wish others share you the same understanding, specially IT senior managers in BANKS :)
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