Yeah Igors I am subtle (Don’t forget I’m french). These types of abstracts attrack me for some time now but I’ve really never succeeded in doing that with a good render in EIAS without visible deforms and troubles like that. I have tested a new way with Trestle which becomes a bug report because the facets weren’t well distributed along my cables with UV texturing which caused some map deformations. Brader seems to be the solution. As it produces false geometry are there some limitations with Ram cause even with 2 Go allocated to Camera I am often stopped with PlacerDeposit for that type of things?
Braider Beta
Igors
#22
Hi, Stephane
We don’t give irresponsible promises and we always say directly what a product can and cannot do (the last one is same important). So, if you plan to use Braider+SuperLines combo to create things like ropes, thick tubes etc. (as we remember your prj), so, sorry Stephane, this combo does NOT do this. The creating of real geometry for Braider paths is another story, wait for more news from Paralumino. Up to now that’s all we can say about this.
Vizfizz
#23
Stephane…
Perhaps you could try this. You’re wanting to create more hair like structures for your project you showed me on the platter. What if you instanced lines on the surface via placer deposit, rather than polygons tubes, and apply Superlines to the line segments. Perhaps using Superlines will help you get past your memory limitations. Worth a shot.
bronco
#24
ok, now i understand. thanks!
Spaghetti Horror Movie
But what from WireMaker set is usable here? Nth-polygon? But Braider uses a sequence of polygons, so “use nth” = no output. Range of polygons? But they can be “scattered” here and there, so result = scattered/cutted.
hmm. maybe a hybrid of both. nth-polygon of the sequence braider uses now? same for range of polygons.
as far as i understand it, braider doesn’t use the original polygon ordering, right? it generates it’s own solution depending on the projection setting. so using this as the base should provide a usable working ground.
Who is “animateable wire coverage”? Why the plug-in should assume a model has regular U/V? What is each proposed mode? Please be more concrete, provide schemes if needed, and, maybe, something interested can be done
i try to put some illustrations together, tomorrow.
U and V are maybe wrong and misleading, but i don’t know how discribe it better.
let’s try it that way:
in the wire-girl movie stop about in the middle, where you see the chest.
the wires form something like a fishing net.
lets call all wires going from bottom left to upper right U and the rest V, ok? 
now, wire coverage means for me that the wires can grow over the original mesh.
complete would make all wires visible from the belly upwards at the same time.
in sequence would make them visible one after the other. negative sequence the same but from the other direction.
ok, i think this is more confusing than before. tommorow i’ll make some pictures 
halfworld
#25
Hello,
Well, I threw together this baby, it’s shine-tastic.
Just to lobby the motion designers amongst us > http://homepage.mac.com/cake_or_death/braiderreact1a.mov - 3 megs
Reactive braider.
A torus passes over a plane, the plane has a circular wave deformer animated over it.
Where polygons on the torus and plane are less then 70 scene units away from each other Antiqua gives said polygons a green colour > Braider reads this green colour and ONLY braids where it is present. Very, very cool
There is a sphere in the background with animated braider settings applied.
10 min setup. 10 min render. 10 min post.
Ian
Igors
#26
Hi, Uwe
Aha, yes, usage UV was designed so (UV is a “fixer” as always)
The basic Braider algorithm is very simple:
- take a polygon
- select a neighbor (adjacent) polygon based on “path” popup choice
- continue chain until “break criteria” says stop or all polygons are processed
Then a produced chain is splined, pushed, modified etc., we hope all these operations are fully intuitive. For “diagonals” modes edges are used instead of polygons. But in any case a neighbor is taken. Create a chain between not neighbors? We see no sense, really. It’s hard to define “chain rules” here, practically it’s always random
Hmm… yes, we’ve only understood that a beauty of chaos requires very strong organization Also please think about following: any plug-in is a “mini-engine” with its input and output. Sometimes (and enough often) it’s more productive to rebuild input in order to achieve a wanted output instead of improving engine itself (and make it harder and bigger).
bronco
#28
hey igors,
WIRE GIRL BIG MOVIE - attention this is ca. 80mb!
i have problems getting the movie file size down without losing to much details.
here’s the project file and photo-jpg compressed movie, try your best
bronco
#30
brian, igors,
clip maps don’t work for me.
Braider ignores them completly, i guess it’s because it is not real geometry.
if the base mesh is cliped, braider ignores that as well.
CLIP MAP PROJECT FILE
i don’t know about TailorToll or davinci, but i guess at least with TailorTool it should be same. if i remember correctly it uses some form of clipping technology.
in my eyes this screams for build in animation abilities!
Igors
#31
Hi, Uwe
Grrr… old painful problem :sad:
“Use UV space” isn’t passed to Camera adequately. Please do following:
-
Set “Use UV space” ON for Braider (Group Window)
-
Set “Disable UV” for clip map (Texture Window)
Alternate way: prepare “horizontal” map to use it with generated UV’s
bronco
#32
ok, i understand.
please make sure to include this information into the docs. it is not very intuitive to have to turn UVs on (and off again somewhere else) even if i don’t plan to use them.
PaulS2
#36
This message may not show right away as it’s only mty second one here so probably will be 24 hrs to get validated.
Braider is very cool along with Superlines!
It sure would be nice to have a full raytraced output though…bumps, reflections etc:-)
Any chance of being about to do this??
Here’s a link to some outstanding work in Realsoft which has a similar look to Braider and Superlines but takes it a few steps further and raytraces the output. I love this guy’s sense of design and competance with his tools:
http://www.bt-3d.de/div/abstract0104/
Good to see the constant development occuring with all of the new pluggins for EI.
Paul
bronco
#37
hi igors,
two little questions:
- what attributes needs a mesh to produce net-like wires like this (only one braider instance):
…instead of normal braider wires (only one direction) like this:
- in the second image you can see some ugly noise at the edges.
Igors
#38
Zdorovo
We would prefer to read “your Braider is a full sh…” but with your renders instead of good words but… without any images :sad:
Well, need to make a first step before few steps further. And need to think twice (or, better yet, more times) before to plan a monster. The “virtual geometry” (your link) looks really cool, but it would be a hypothetic plugin with high price, long render time, long development time etc. Yes, it’s more powerful, but same time it’s more complex, more expensive and it requires more, much more from developer and user as well. We can’t agree such monster is what EI users need (at least now).
After all only artists make tools creative, right?
Vizfizz
#39
I’m sure that Paul will be coming up with some interesting images. The concept art link that Paul posted is very nice, but specialized. Having RT capabilities for Superlines would be nice, but defeats the purpose of that shader.
Superlines is intended for rapid, low cost geometry replacement and augmentation of wireframe renders. Its benefits are speed and simplicity. What we need is the ability to take advantage of Braider’s source output (lines) or any path for that matter, and combine it with a user definable profile that will make true geometry rather than a line render. Disadvantages here, of course, are high poly counts and reduction of speed. However, the payoff is actual geometry that can take advantage of all of EIAS’ rendering capabilities. The Igors are right… small steps first… but who knows where that might lead.
bronco
#40
another question:
how exactly is the UV space laid out for Braider/ Superlines pseudo geometry?
I can only see one very thin line in the texture map window.
wouldn’t it be nice if you could choose between, lets say:
- map all wires/braider
- map one wire, copy to all the others (for easy texturing of robes or so)
possible?