Box2D physics editor with Box2DWeb importer

[scoots]

I've been doing some work with Box2DWeb and find it suitable for the HTML5 canvas based physics simulations that I need. However, the editing program I've previously used (Physics Editor) doesn't have a JS Box2D importer and is missing features like joint editing that I'd like to have. The other tools I've checked out have varying levels of Box2D feature support, and only one seems to have a JS importer written.

 

R.U.B.E (supports joints and has JS importer) https://www.iforce2d.net/rube/ 

Physics Body Editor (open source) https://code.google.com/p/box2d-editor/

TS4's editor (online, free, c++ export format) http://ts4.us/tools/box2deditor.html

Physics Editor(no joints, no JS loader) www.codeandweb.com/physicseditor

 

 

Does anyone have experience with any of these? Any other editors I should consider? Unless there is some great reason to buy one I'll likely go with Physics Body Editor since I can fork the code and add any features I need. I'll likely be writing an importer unless there's one I don't know of, I'll be sure to share that once it's suitable for use.

 

Thanks!

[Alvin]

I have never used any of them for a real world project, but I agree that going to Physics Body Editor is probably a good idea.

Or maybe it's just me and the fact that I love open source.

[dhaber]

My usage is quite a bit different, but I've tried a lot of these in the past.   My goal with them is usually to define the shape for an object in places where a rectangle or circle isn't good enough.  It isn't the best or easiest tool, but I've had the some luck with the TS4 one.   The UI is a little odd, but it isn't too difficult to load in an image, trace a path around it, and export the new shape data.   I never use their generated code.  Instead, I just take their coordinate data and throw it into a list of polygonVertices.

[scoots]

Thanks for the info. Have you used R.U.B.E.? I'm wondering how well their existing JS importer works.

[dhaber]

Thanks for the info. Have you used R.U.B.E.? I'm wondering how well their existing JS importer works.

 

I actually tried RUBE.  It looks pretty good, and the UI feels nice.  Unfortunately, I found the Linux version to be frustratingly glitchy, and so I gave up.  It does have a real nice list of features though and only cost $30, so it could be worth considering.

 

EDIT:  I retried RUBE and found it to be glitch-free.   See my reply below.

[dhaber]

I actually tried RUBE.  It looks pretty good, and the UI feels nice.  Unfortunately, I found the Linux version to be frustratingly glitchy, and so I gave up.  It does have a real nice list of features though and only cost $30, so it could be worth considering.

 

 

After writing the above message the RUBE developer contacted me to ask for more details.  He said that he develops on Linux, and so was surprised that there were problems.    I wrote him a couple notes of what I could remember about past issues.   I also retried RUBE, and found it to be glitch-free.  I don't know if anything changed with RUBE.  It could also be that I was on an old Debian install last time, and this time I was on a recent Ubuntu install.

 

Here are a few notes from my experiments today.   The UI feels slightly odd at first with all the various modes and shortcuts for different actions, but the contextual help makes it easy to learn quickly.  Without too much effort I was able to build a scene involving several objects, a polygon shape built around an image, and some modifications to Box2D object properties.   Once I got the keys down it was very fast to work with.   

 

I guess whether RUBE is the right choice depends on your needs.   If you need to build and test scenes with lots of physics, I can see RUBE being very helpful.     There is a box2dweb loader, and even without that the JSON format looks clean.

 

Of the full-scene editors, it seems to be the best.   Other tools like Physics Body Editor and PhysicsEditor are good for setting up the collision map for a body, but not as oriented around putting together complete scenes.  Each of those (I believe) can auto-trace images to create the collision map, but I'm not sure if RUBE does that.   TS4 is fine for very simple things, but overall is pretty rough.  I've made lots of use of TS4, mostly out of convenience since it is web based and simple.

 

My usage and knowledge of RUBE is mostly limited to a little bit of playing around, but I like what I'm seeing.  I'd recommend trying out the demo and coming to your own conclusions. 

[headwinds]

I'd highly recommend R.U.B.E. I played around with it along with Box2DWeb and CreateJS to create this crazy little experiment which didn't really go anywhere but I had fun working on it at the time; learned a lot about skinning characters, creating a camera and listening to collisions. I've shared it on github. 

 

R.U.B.E. is excellent for setting up a scene which exports as json. I know that Chris Cambell, the developer behind R.U.B.E., is keen on working with HTML5 game developers and has gone to some great length making it easy to get started including writing that json exporter and other javascript files which load the json and recreate the phsyics world in your game. For me, it was $30 well spent and as dhaber pointed out, Chris is approachable and open to questions about his fine product. He also produces these insanely good series of how-to videos on Youtube.

 

 

[headwinds]

here's something to watch too... FizzX a Box2D editor (Adobe Air app) that exports json. After playing with it for a few minutes, it looks like a good start as an early release and it does allow one to quickly construct a scene.

 

It's developed by Allan Bishop, who has an awesome Box2D tutorial site.

[raptorjesus]

Would you in general recommend R.U.B.E for Phaser if I want polygons like in the phaser examples?  I included a link to one down below.  I would like to be creating polygons, I tried Physics Body Editor (Box2d-editor) and could not even get a normal triangle I exported to load on the stage using Phaser.

 

What kind of software can I use to create polygons like the ones in the p2 examples?  Preferably for Ubuntu/Linux, but Mac, Windows softwares are ok too!  Thanks.

 

http://examples.phaser.io/_site/view_full.html?d=p2%20physics&f=load+polygon+1.js&t=load%20polygon%201

[estebon]

Hi there, I have been working on a box2d level editor. Please try it out, it is free, have full support of all box2d joints and bodies, scale rotation traslation and on the fly editing.

Can export to objective c with cocos2d and to xml, soon also will export to json. also can handle and optimize textures as in texture  packager.

 

It is completely free and will ever be. 

 

www.freefable.com

www.estebon.mx/fable

 

[umen]

@estebon
Hey you made great tool BUT 

there is bug in it 

it can't load *.png images , no log to see the error or any thing .

also can you leave any way to connect you ?
thanks