Little Particle Thread

[isobarxx]

Cool, thanks very much.

[Taron333]

Bubbles_large.fxs (right click save as) (http://www.projectmessiah.com/x4/vids/DemoScenes/Bubbles_large.fxs)

[Wireframes]

Wow cool

thanks Taron !!! :thumbsup:

Im going to try this ...

[rush123]

Thanks again Taron.

[Tama]

Excellent!

[alvin-cgi]

cooooool...:drool:

[Geco]

thank you!

[numberEleven]

What codec are those clips in?

Thanks.

[EvilGnome]

How long did the particle renders take? What were the machine stats?

Looking for how easily the renderer might be used in a production environment.

[Geco]

What codec are those clips in?

Thanks.DivX 5.0 is the codec of the Assorted Particle Clips.

[Taron333]

How long did the particle renders take? What were the machine stats?

Looking for how easily the renderer might be used in a production environment.

Just run the little demo scenes and you're getting an idea. On my dual opteron some of them rendered between under a second and 10seconds. The underwater one was the slowest climbing up to I think 6minutes at the worst but only a few seconds in the beginning of course. On this one I also just used one particle system for all the steam, using an object as emitter which had only polygons where the vents are placed. Kind of a nice way of doing that!

Currently using several particle systems slow down the renders a lot as soon as they intersect. The particle rendering concept, which I'm actually really proud of, introduced a different way of dealing with the render pipeline and we're about to implement it on a larger scale. At first it will cover multiple systems and intersecting transparent geometry and in a second step we'll see to explore the use beyond that as well!

William Eggington has already used it in production, I believe. But maybe he'll tell us more about it. I'm wondering where he is right now, feels like I havn't seen a post from him in a few?!

Anyway...experiment with the particles, explore their abilities! It's a lot of fun and leads to a lot of very unusual effects. I've added a system in the shading that adjusts the particles coordinate systems based on proximity to each other or the particles of a different system. It's pretty crazy. I've used it on the comic_fire. Those are two systems, while the first one is the flame part and the second one the smoke. Yet the second one modulates the first one as it rushes by. Really crazy stuff.

[adl]

Hi Taron,
i have problems to download your scene examples...
The requested URL /*taron/DemoScenes/smoke01.fxs was not found on this server.

Thank you
ADL
adl@imagonet.it

[Wegg]

I'm here. I just had to fight a little battle with the management here at CGTalk. We lost our Front Page status for a little while there. Not cool.

Yea I used particles on a film project a few weeks back. It was a rush job so Messiah's render speed saved the day. Even at full 2k film resolution Messiah just kept spitting out frames. The movie comes out February of next year so I can show you what I did then. Nothing major.

[AAAron]

I'm here. I just had to fight a little battle with the management here at CGTalk. We lost our Front Page status for a little while there. Not cool.

I was about to pick a fight about that, big thanks!!! :thumbsup:

[stooch]

broken links

also i tried adding particle emitter and its emitting from the camera... regardless of where i place the particles?? also how do i add gravity? seems to have no effect.

Also, i noticed that the viewport UI is not adequate for the panel settings. for example if you drag the emission velocity to 4, the slider on the viewport goes off screen...

Also, there is no visual feedback for such things as cone angle... I think we need some kind of widgets for the emitters. allowing us to place and adjust some basic settings with handles rather then dragging sliders...

in general its very awkward moving and interacting wth emitters, m not sure what to drag and when i do drag, it doesnt seem to affect the particle emission origin???

[WebScriptz]

Question!
Anyone seen any hair growing in the particle demo clips??

;)

[stooch]

tried adding a sphere primitive as a collision object and it doesnt work.

I added more primitives and started playing with their friction and bounce settings and that seemed to affect the particles.

however i then decided to delete one of the objects and it crashed the program.

[AAAron]

Was it a procedural or a real object sphere?

[stooch]

messiah primitives are being used here.

so far its very awkward to work wth particles.

not in the same league as the animation toolset that is. There is no widgets or any kind of icons that represent your emitter type or basic attributes. for example a cone with an adjustable cone handle would be nice. and some tweaks to the floating UI are in order, when you select a value that is outside the floating GUI, i think the gui needs to reflect this by changing the MAX value of the slider to the value you input in the input field. otherwise the onscreen GUI is useless if you are working with values outside of its bounds. this goes for all floating GUIS, i find that many times i want a value that is outside of the range and end up with having to resort to the panel callout or worse, lose my prevous value by clicking on the slider and it just snaps back to 1 (or whatever the max slider amount may be)

I also dont like how the force node has a null object that stays in place even though you are moving its parent null object....

also, the drop down list for collision object selection acts very strangely. the first time i click on it, it quickly selects the bottom most entry and introduces an offset to the mouse cursor position. So when i drag my mouse up and down, the selection in the list moves up and down although the mouse cursor is well above the selected entry.

its a similar issue spotted in other drop down menus where it scrolls all the way to the bottom of the list on its own volition.

[Taron333]

[QUOTE=stooch]
so far its very awkward to work wth particles.
not in the same league as the animation toolset that is. QUOTE]

It certainly is still more in it's babystep phase in regards to the interface. Procedural objects do not have polygons and therefore can not be used for collisions. But I think it would be intereting to be able to use them, too. I had mentioned that at some point. However, you can use any polygon object, so why don't you.

All of the controls, even while not present in the viewport, are present in the interface and allow for great things to happen. As part of our major plan the viewport and visual controls will be improved vastly, but we're not there, yet. If you understand the power of the tool, you may bring yourself to handle a few more compromises in terms of creature comforts. Some of those features you may actually have to chew and not just swallow. But I really understand, don't get me wrong. Bare with us on that one and enjoy what's possible, because it might just be more than you are able to exploid and should keep your artistic abilities excited until long after the visual tools have reached perfection! :arteest:

I don't really get your "force null stay in place" problem or even observation? But it doesn't matter too much in this case, because it all comes down to the same issue, I guess. So, yeah, it's a little crude as far as viewport interaction goes. Lord knows, you might have to use your imagination... :eek: ...like with the freaking displacement, or with some realtime texturing and procedural textures, and shadows and all the other things that are not yet realtime on the screen. I not only wished they were, but in fact we are working on all of these things. Some of them we have just thought about and only discussed ideas a little, but others we have already planned out a little. So good things will happen. Ironically you'll have to be with us right now as strong as you can. You're strength and your readiness to work with us right now is, what will help make it all possible and more so it'll make it all happen even faster and sooner! (has the music reached a climax yet. :scream: ..?...no...oh, it did!? Ah well, then.. :wise: .I guess I better calm down again, too... :hmm: )

Ok...so...what's the deal with that download problem...? I'll go check!

The link was wrong, somebody had changed it or something has?! Maybe the server doesn't like the " tilde " symbol? Very strange....If that doesn't work, I don't know what then...

HAHAHA, shit....it doesn't!!! It's the tilde symbol ( next to the number 1 on most keyboards, pressed with shift, looks like a wavey minus!). Darned...what now....hmmm
How did it work yesterday?
Man that sucks...
why did it work before....sabotage!? :cry:
Hmmm....
WEll, hell.... :shrug:
I guess CGSociety is turning against us...sorry. :sad:

Taron

[MoodyB]

when you select a value that is outside the floating GUI, i think the gui needs to reflect this by changing the MAX value of the slider to the value you input in the input field. otherwise the onscreen GUI is useless if you are working with values outside of its bounds. this goes for all floating GUIS, i find that many times i want a value that is outside of the range and end up with having to resort to the panel callout or worse, lose my prevous value by clicking on the slider and it just snaps back to 1 (or whatever the max slider amount may be)


I'd love to see all sliders do what you suggested stooch, or at least have the ' min - max ' area of the sliders' setup panel finaly activated ( which has been in the interface for a looooong time now not doing anything :hmm: )

[stooch]

Thanks for replying taron. i hope you dont mistake my constructive criticism as whining or complaining, im playing with all the new features and giving you my thoughts and ideas on how to make them better. In no way do i want to imply that im upset or giving up on anything. if i did give you that impression then im sorry. I have said it before and ill say it again, thanks for all the great work!

Im glad to see that its progressing and issues are being knocked out, you know ill be the first one to stick up for messiah if others knock it.

[Taron333]

Man, Stooch! 6 month of hard and continous work don't wear me out as much as 5 days online, hahahaha! But I did get the gist of what you were saying and of course you are very right. I hope that some of that came through in what I replied. But anyway, I've looked at the slider code myself, yes, I took the plunge, and saw that in theory the min max is actually working. Now we have to examine as to what's involved in getting that into the fileformat and structures without causing any troubles. There are a few other pressing things, too, which we are examining right now. Copy and Paste for materials was just working perfectly fine, just in the latest build it started to do something different and it's not perfectly clear yet what that is. It's copying and pasting the content just fine, except that it appears as if the material node doesn't get the connections to the shaders...strange stuff...so we're on those things. There are a few more things, some little once we might be able to take care of right away, but also a few mildly major possible enhancements we could potentially squeeze in, too. But it looks much like we'll work towards another release in a few weeks, I think. And maybe a few tiny patches along the way. I will certainly release the updated grids&wires shader with new fun stuff in it, that should make it more complete and even more pleasant. In the meantime I will continue to focus on tutorials, besides the coding.

So, yeah, your feedback is received and really considered as constructive! It's of course sometimes a thin line seperating what sounds more like complaints as opposed to requests, yet, I totally understand. I would have gone nutz over some of the things back in the day when I wasn't involved in the process of making all this stuff! Hahaha...man, it's a different world, I can tell you. So quickly achievements make you happy as a developer, yet, the users have a different focus at first. Eventually, and that's what I'm hoping for, they actually dial in their focus, too, on the freaking great things you can do with that stuff and realize how easy most of it actually is, even while the front-end leaves a lot of room for wishes. But we are dealing with it and we, too, can't wait to get it over with and have it all nice and polished and complete. I can actually see the fun in doing all of that, too. So...having the guts in place should give us some room to build up the frontend again.

Thanx, Stooch and forgive me, if I came across too defencive (which is ironic, because not too long ago I made a point out of me not having to be defencive online, because I'd know what to focus on in terms of feedback and don't have too much pride that could get in the way. But by now, I do feel like one of the fathers of this package...and I hate seeing it stomped upon without the really useful kind of inquisition. Funny...)

Anyway, all is well and we're just on track...minds are clear and open and ready to continue! :wip: :lightbulb

[Taron333]

If you want to assign objects to be moved by particles you'll have to use the "slave parent" option in the emitter. It will move all the children of this parent object and assigns them to the particles in the order in which they are in the list. It's only the most primitive implementation of it, but it does work.

Just thought I'd owe that answer to some older question, I remember from a few days ago...can't see where it was, though...but here it is! :)

[WesComan]

If you want to assign objects to be moved by particles you'll have to use the "slave parent" option in the emitter. It will move all the children of this parent object and assigns them to the particles in the order in which they are in the list. It's only the most primitive implementation of it, but it does work.

Just thought I'd owe that answer to some older question, I remember from a few days ago...can't see where it was, though...but here it is! :)

There's a slight anomoly here, only geometry objects can be selected as slave parents. This is a bit wierd as most lists of objects would normally be under a null. And of course instances would be a mighty fine addition here ;)

[Taron333]

There's a slight anomoly here, only geometry objects can be selected as slave parents. This is a bit wierd as most lists of objects would normally be under a null. And of course instances would be a mighty fine addition here ;)
:blush: Yeah, we just noticed that, too. It wasn't ment to be like that and we've already ironed it out...tisk, tisk, tisk. No worries!
Yes, the instancing thing is a biggy we've been also thinking about already for a while. Hmmm...so many things. I just thought of other things as well in terms of associating objects to particles. It'll come!

[dobermunk]

I'd love to see all sliders do what you suggested stooch, or at least have the ' min - max ' area of the sliders' setup panel finaly activated ( which has been in the interface for a looooong time now not doing anything :hmm: )

Yes! please!
Just as muscle bone creation is an intuitively executed script, make that min/max a part of the slider setup module! PLEeeeASE!

[rush123]

Taron,

In your particle test example, in the 'Vortex_early_test01' you seem to be able to confine the particles to a ball object is this done be using ‘detection collision’ and is it possible to confine particles to the volume of any type of geometry? Better still is possible to get that file for study?

Thanks

R

[Taron333]

Taron,

In your particle test example, in the 'Vortex_early_test01' you seem to be able to confine the particles to a ball object is this done be using ‘detection collision’ and is it possible to confine particles to the volume of any type of geometry? Better still is possible to get that file for study?

Thanks

R

Kinda nice, huh? Hihihi, no it's done with the vortex force! You can have unlimited amounts of vortex centeres by picking a parent object as the "master" and check on "use children". All the children will be now vortex controllers and their banking controls the amount of spin they get, y scale controls the twisting speed and the z scale controls the pull (magnet type) strength. This way you can animate the vortecees then to act like "airflow" dynamics. It's kinda nice. I just dynamically parented one of the nulls to the ball as it moved through the steam. :D

[rush123]

Thanks Taron,

I realise that I didn't say that the effect was fabulous, anyway at least I won my bet with Wireframe, who said it was done using 'collision' detection. I'll have to try your technique when I get some time. but thanks for the explanation, and you're bringing back the fun in learning messiah again.

R

[Julez4001]

You know taron, if you guys are making so much headway in changing the functionality of particles, let that be the last video you do on your tutorial tour as it sounds like it will be a different beast all together.

[rush123]

Kinda nice, huh? Hihihi, no it's done with the vortex force! You can have unlimited amounts of vortex centeres by picking a parent object as the "master" and check on "use children". All the children will be now vortex controllers and their banking controls the amount of spin they get, y scale controls the twisting speed and the z scale controls the pull (magnet type) strength. This way you can animate the vortecees then to act like "airflow" dynamics. It's kinda nice. I just dynamically parented one of the nulls to the ball as it moved through the steam. :D

Taron,

When you refer to ‘y scale and z scale’ are those the ‘twist, attract, spin’ setting in the vortex controller? Is it possible to get an example file that uses the new vortex controllers? Unless you have already supplied one that I missed, which is more likely.

edit; I’ve now spent an hour with vortex controller and I’m clueless. The ‘twist, attract, and spin’ labels seem to act like ‘xyz’. You can’t seem to move the vortex in the display windows. I must be doing something wrong, just some basic guidance would help at this stage.

Again thanks in advance.

R

[rush123]

Bump . . . .

[Taron333]

Hahaha, what does "bump..." mean....head falling on table? :D

Sorry, had to giggle. Ain't funny, I know. I will supply some tutorials and demo scenes very quickly for that stuff, because it's super easy just as you understand how it works and probably a little tricky before then. Because if you don't understand the foundation of it, it's a little rough to get through. Sometimes it's just this tiny little totally basic thing that you've missed.

Don't worrry, I'll show you! :wavey:

[rush123]

Thanks for the answer Taron, I'll lookforward to the demo scenes.

R

Oh, I've got some ice on my bump now, let hope we get the demo scenes before it melts ;)

[Wireframes]

Taron

Can you post "sparks01" and "Sparks02" files ?
(I continue to experiment Messiah particles)

Thanks

Phil

[Taron333]

Sparks02 (http://www.projectmessiah.com/~taron/DemoScenes/Sparks02.zip) is all you need, I think! It has everything that 01 has plus the atmosphere and such! :)

[Wireframes]

Cool :thumbsup:

Thanks Taron

[Wireframes]

Taron

Can you post your famous "vortex_test" files ?

Thanks

Phil

P.S : The particles update is a really great point !

[Taron333]

Oh yes, they should come with my tutorial, but I'll see that I make it even sooner. The particles are a great topic indeed. Lot's to show, lot of possibilities. I'm also working on a new force that's really fun and powerful (hopefully, but it's going great so far!). :)

Thanx, Phil!

Taron

[crossbones]

Anyone notice the play back in Real-time on your machine. The OGL drawing method its using really slows things down. Is there a way to change the drawing method to something less intense.

[Taron333]

Anyone notice the play back in Real-time on your machine. The OGL drawing method its using really slows things down. Is there a way to change the drawing method to something less intense.

You can choose between three different basic display methods in the emitter's first page. Just open up the menu some more to the right and you'll see (F3).
If you have never done that (F3), you'll notice that there are a whole bunch of extra parameters for you to use, inlcuding precision settings and other excellent control features!

Also, check your general playback settings (bottom line "play frames".."hold"..."fraction...") in case you're having a funny playback behavior, it might be on purpose? :p

I use "play frames" very often, but have "hold" on 0.0 of course.

:buttrock:

[crossbones]

The other methods are almost completely unusable outside of a preiview animation. I have here two AMD 64 X2 with NV cards and 2 intel P4's with ATI, they both come to a grinding hault when viewing the sparks demo in real-time left on axis. The quads.circles, axis, ,metablobs do not indidcate to me what's actually going on in the beautiful renders we are able to produce. I hope there are plans to give us some visual feedback, or single dots even that would better help us do particle effects in messiah.

[Taron333]

Hmmm...rather strange. Can anyone confirm that? With the real-time motionblur and a solid 24frame playback I really can't get it to come to a halt?! Strange....don't know what's going on there!?
I'll check into it...not sure what's going on there for you. Hmmm....I'll let you know! :shrug:

[rush123]

hi all,

Thought I’d add to this thread and post an image from my recent particle tests, it’s a bit different from the usual type (hope you agree). To my mind it shows what is possible with Messiah. It was made using the ‘noisette’, ‘grid & wire’, and ‘gradient’ nodes all connected to the particle node.

R

http://img56.imageshack.us/img56/5511/particlesinsidespheretest070ds.th.jpg (http://img56.imageshack.us/my.php?image=particlesinsidespheretest070ds.jpg)

Just added ‘grid & wire’ node to Taron's bubbles example.

http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/337/bubbles012084fe.th.jpg (http://img168.imageshack.us/my.php?image=bubbles012084fe.jpg)

Message to pmG, continue on with the great development work you are doing in Messiah, thanks :thumbsup:

[dobermunk]

Okay Rush123, you can't just pop in here with a kick-ass voxel like that and say nothing more than "it was made by connecting nodes"! Wow!

Show more! How does it look animated?

[rush123]

I'm back to my particles experiments, I’ve added a ‘node’ schematic for those interested.

R


http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/9504/fuzzball0fs.th.jpg (http://img135.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fuzzball0fs.jpg)


http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/6628/fuzzyballnodes4mj.th.jpg (http://img135.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fuzzyballnodes4mj.jpg)

[Nichod]

I'd have to agree on a better visual feedback needed on the particles. I found all the options to be very limiting on the visual reference they provide. Great effects are possible. I do hope those video tutorial do emerge at some point.

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