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C.Smith
12-03-2007, 06:02 PM
12/03/07 NEW TOOL: CS_SPRITICLES

Download Here (http://circlesofdelusion.blogspot.com/)

From the docs:

What's new 12/03/07:

- CS_Spriticles: Sprite based particle tool.

- Added 2 examples of Spritcle settings in the 'Examples' folder

24. CS_Spriticles (Needs Thinking Particles installed)

What is it: It's basically a greatest hits of TP nodes blended in one simple tool particle sprite tool. It also auto detects the active camera for the sprites to always look at. I often want to use sprite particle systems but was always too lazy to build what I needed so I made this for an easy to grab and use tool.

General directions: You'll see I put a temporary circle material on it. Just replace that with the material of your choice then dial in the user sliders to get the result you want. For the 'Copy Motion' part of the user sliders, the tool itself (master null) should be in motion or the particles will have no motion to copy.

Props: HUGE thanks once again to Lennart(TCA Studios). He helped me with the Coffee code to auto-detect the active camera so the user wouldn't have to keep dropping the camera of choice into a linkbox. Also thanks to PerAnders, Srek, and JoelD, for unknowingly helping me by posting in old CGTalk threads about particles. Thanks to The Monkey for his 10 minute beta test.

Sliders:

Particle Group: This defaults to 'ALL'. But if you want separate groups in your scene then check the C4D docs on creating new particle groups. Then drop them in this box for individual control over multiple groups.
Birth Rate: How often particles are created
Emit Radius: This expands a circle in which particles emit from.
Spread: How much the particles spread out from the origin.

Speed: Speed at which particles travel away from the emitter
Speed variation: Self explanatory
Scale: Master scale
Scale over life (Grad bar): This defaults to zero->max->zero for a smooth growth and decay. But mess with it for interesting results. At minimum you can drag the white point back and forth to bias where the particles hit their growth peak.
Rotation: Since the particles always look at the cam this is just a pos and neg slider for Clockwise or counter clockwise rate.
Rotate from Velocity(Checkbox): When unchecked the particles have a constant rotation. When checked the speed of rotation is multiplied by the velocity. So the faster the particel, the faster it spins.

Gravity: Negative to make them lighter than air, positive to make them heavier than air.
Turbulence: The amplitude of the turbulence
Turbulent Freq: The complexity of the turbulence.

Copy Amount: Once again, the master null needs to be in motion to see any effect. This is how much the particles copy the master null's motion.
Copy Variation: How much the particles vary in the amount of motion copy
Direction Var: This will make some particles find new directions. So they copy the motion but in new paths.

IlaySHP
12-03-2007, 06:09 PM
Chris, great!
Thank you and who helped to you too!

Tank_3D_Attack
12-03-2007, 06:34 PM
Thanks for sharing! Some EXCELLENT stuff in there!

Thomas

flingster
12-03-2007, 06:58 PM
thanks for sharing and spreading the love..and updating.:buttrock:

JoelOtron
12-03-2007, 07:02 PM
Thanks Chris!!!

soccerrprp
12-03-2007, 07:11 PM
Thanks Chris!

lllab
12-03-2007, 07:12 PM
very nice chris
cheers
stefan

GruvDOne
12-03-2007, 07:37 PM
nice thanks! and BTW - I love the rant on your page about drivers. Priceless. One of my biggest issues comes from people who change lanes without either signaling OR looking at where they are going. Of the latter, people driving SUV's are the worst..

joeski4d
12-03-2007, 08:02 PM
Looks very cool, thanks again Chris for your generosity!

C.Smith
12-03-2007, 10:04 PM
Shucks, thanks, guys. Glad you like.

deljs
12-04-2007, 12:31 AM
Thanks, very cool!
Love the blog too. :applause:

big smokedog
12-04-2007, 01:37 AM
Thanks a bunch. Your work is greatly appreciated.

danb
12-04-2007, 03:20 AM
Wow that is very generous of you!! Thanks for sharing!

govinda
12-04-2007, 05:59 AM
Did you ever know that you're my heeeeero,
and everything I would like to beeeeee?
I can fly higher than an eagle,
for you are the wind beneath my wings.

:)

JustinB
12-04-2007, 07:47 AM
Thanks Chris. These will be extremely useful!

wim
12-04-2007, 11:50 AM
Really nice, thanks for sharing!

C.Smith
12-04-2007, 12:53 PM
Did you ever know that you're my heeeeero,
and everything I would like to beeeeee?
I can fly higher than an eagle,
for you are the wind beneath my wings.

:)


Oh Richard. Your singing voice always brings me to tears ;)

smurfted
12-04-2007, 01:15 PM
You made airwolfs rotors spin..
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=47&t=560910

Great stuff..

ernia
12-04-2007, 02:01 PM
Thanks C. Smith. Nice tools. Love the blog, too :)

. . . and to Govinda-- sadly, I'll be singing that damn song the rest of the day, now.

ernia

caraffi
12-04-2007, 03:13 PM
thanks m8... love the blog :)

Sparkle
08-18-2008, 08:38 AM
Thats a great tool. Thanks for that.
Nevertheless I'm still waiting for Maxon to implement some sort of sprite object similar to stormtracer. The method with the polygons facing the camera is good for some tasks, but when the particle cloud gets really dense you have to crank up your raydepth to insane amounts and it will render forever.

Shademaster
08-18-2008, 09:11 AM
Thanks C.Smith!

Great blog too, agree with a lot of things heh :D.

3dj
08-18-2008, 01:12 PM
Thanks Chris, love your tools! And I love even more you are willing to share them with us.

-Jim

RandyLeeBlain
08-18-2008, 01:46 PM
Haha! Yer blog is funny. I totally agree about Indie bands and films. I am sick and fed up of unrhyming poetry, films that drool off into infinity without telling a story, bands that refuse to learn their instruments because they play with "feel" and will not adjust their amp volumes to make their sound palatable and unpainful to the more educated ear.

On topic.. Yer tools are well thought out and fun to play with. Good job.

Best
Randy

heathivan
08-18-2008, 02:04 PM
How did I miss this one? I'm glad it got bumped up. Wow! Spriticles rocks! Thanks again for your generosity. :thumbsup:

---h

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