Luxology (http://www.luxology.com) has announced the availability of recoil, a new, US$199 plug-in for modo 501 that simulates dynamic rigid body interactions.
Based on the open source Bullet physics engine, which is used extensively within the games and film industries, recoil simulates dynamic forces and calculates collisions between objects, allowing users to create complex animations or automatically stack vast numbers of objects.
The plug-in was developed independently by Eric Soulvie using the modo Plug-in Software Development Kit (SDK) and runs on both the Mac and PC versions of modo 501. Utilizing version 2.77 of the Bullet physics engine, recoil simplifies the setup and execution of complex physical simulations by combining robust collision detection with a variety of constraints, forces and controls, says Soulvie. By simply tagging any mesh item to be dynamic, the object is ready to respond to forces like gravity or collisions from other objects in a modo scene, he adds.