Little Particle Thread

#21

[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

#22

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: )

#23

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.

#24

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

#25

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! :slight_smile:

#26

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 :wink:

#27

: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!

#28

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

#29

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

#30

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. :smiley:

#31

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

#32

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.

#33

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

#34

Bump . . . .

#35

Hahaha, what does “bump…” mean…head falling on table? :smiley:

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:

#36

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 :wink:

#37

Taron

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

Thanks

Phil

#38

Sparks02 is all you need, I think! It has everything that 01 has plus the atmosphere and such! :slight_smile:

#39

Cool :thumbsup:

Thanks Taron

#40

Taron

Can you post your famous “vortex_test” files ?

Thanks

Phil

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