Paralumino Plugins v2

#221

Absolutely possible. Here’s a quick breakdown of capabilities:

Scrim: Lofts polyline/wires to form surfaces.
Swage: Extrudes polyline/wires along a path.
Revolver: Lathes polyline/wires around a central axis.
Braider: Analyzes geometry and creates polyline/wires that follow surface topology.
Trestle: Draws 2D polylines/wires that feed Scrim, Swage, and Revolver along with other 3rd party plugins.

Free plugins include:

Path2line: Converts an object motion path into a polyline for use with Scrim, Swage, and Revolver.
Wiremaker: Analyzes geometry and creates polyline/wires based of edges or polygons.
Runline: Included with Swage to cut up polylines into various user defined lengths.
Superlines: Creates shader based "false"geometry on wires at render time.

Konkeptoine Geometry Plugins that work well with Paralumino:

Mrs. Bebel: Extrudes surfaces with custom profile bevels. (Not path extrude)
Encage: Smoothes crude/rough geometry with SubDivision surface protocols.

#222

Rueben,

From what I saw in your example, you used Braider to analyze a model to create surface wires and then used them as a base path to extrude geometry along with Swage right? My guess is there might be overlapping areas of geometry that is causing the flickering.

Swage will extrude in realtime and it works pretty well…

#223

This is a simple example of animated extrusion in realtime. :

www.paralumino.com/CG_Talk/Swagetest.mov

www.paralumino.com/CG_Talk/Swagetest2b.mov

Here a simple wire was exported by EIM I believe and used as the extrusion path for the profile to follow. Everything here was being done in realtime in the EI camera window.

#224

Hi Brian,

The setup was swage>runline>braider- i’ve still not rendered it out but i get the feeling it will still happen, anyway still trying out a few things… maybe i should read the manual :wink:

#225

Another animated extrusion. The idea of the Hilbert cube was from the work of Stephan (sacenator) in the WIP section.

http://www.rdn.qc.ca/eias/Project_Hilbert2.mov

#226

Wow, Richard that’s amazing.
Please submit it to the EI gallery. So it’s all Swage?

#227

Possibilities…

Could Tesla conceivably save out wires and models in the Paralumino plugin format?

JimM

#228

Thank you Aziz. Yes, it’s all Swage and sooooo easy to do…
The Hilbert path was made in FormZ and exported as DXF (polylines).
It is really rewarding to play with these tools because of the instant feedback of your alterations. Originally it was supposed to be only one round extrusion but it was so simple to do, I made three… And I regret not having the star shape rotating as it moves…
Very powerful toys.

#229

Olé, Richard triple ex good example, excellent execution.

More More please:applause:

Cheers
Diego

#230

Hi Jim,

Right now EIM (and potentially Telsa) wires can be saved out as a FACT file that can be used as child entities for Revolver, Scrim, Swage, Runline and Superlines to work on. Unfortunately EIM wires can not be loaded directly into Trestle for CV point editing. This is another import capability I’d like to see after AI files are supported.

However right now the old EIM has a small bug in it in that exported EIM wires contain 64 CV points per segment. So in the simplest terms if you were to draw a straight line with just 2 points and export that wire out of EIM to Animator, the exported Fact model would possess 64 CV points along that line. That would produce a huge amount of geometry with any of our plugins. You can only imagine if you were to draw a more complicated shape in EIM…the exported wire would possess hundreds of CVs and the result would be a polygon nightmare in Animator.

Hopefully Tesla will allow for variable tesselation for exported wires. That will improve things dramatically for us. And if I can’t get the Igors to assist in creating v2 of Trestle, perhaps a tool can be added in Tesla to write out polylines in Trestle’s native point format. I don’t know yet.

#231

Thanks for clarifying, Brian.

I’m becoming more and more tempted by your Paralumino plugins, by the way.
The animations being shown in this thread are excellent advertisements.

Any update on when you’ll be able to share more about Tesla?

JimM

#232

Inspired by this thread I have taken yet another good look at the offerings at Zaxwerks.

I really do like the way the ProAnimator package works - namely the quality of the text/ai extrusions and also the animation presets. The big let down is the rendering. I can’t see myself going for this without options to render elsewhere. Sadly there seems to be no way to get the animation out of ProAnimator & into EIAS or other 3D application. If only ProAnimator exported the animation, could this not be done via BVH?

BB

#233

Wouldn´t there ProModeler come in handy, instead of ProAnimator, to do the animating and rendering in EIAS?

Regards
Stefan

#234

No the speed and simplicity of ProAnimator’s animation (presets) is appealing but not the rendering.
If animation paths could be exported then that would mean I could perhaps tweak animation in EIAS. Mostly I just want to render in EIAS - no way do I ever want to use Zaxwerks renderer, to my eyes it’s horrid and far too limited.

BB

edit: Getting 3D text/logos into EIAS is not a problem for me (I have good modeling tools, but I am not very good at motion graphics animation).

#235

1.Ok so will it be ¨easier to develop¨ a Tesla loader inside Trestle, for CV edit and animation than the famous .ai importer?

  1. I guess what i was looking for is a combination of ASwage and MrsBevel so it could do an extrusion based on a path or polyline and at the same time rounded caps.That could be amazing for version2 of SWAGE or whatever you guys want.
#236

The need for wire import from Tesla into Trestle would at least give a certain amount of construction compatibility between applications for the purposes of animation. Its not much, but even the smallest amount would go a long way here.

As for Caps…well right now Swage can already construct rounded caps if that’s the way you want to draw them. Swage’s capping function is a bit different than most… I’ll agree. But it does work pretty well once you get the hang of it. I’ll admit that Bebel is more intuitive.

#237

•••••Sadly there seems to be no way to get the animation out of ProAnimator & into EIAS or other 3D application. If only ProAnimator exported the animation, could this not be done via BVH?•••••

Why would you want to. I have to politely disagree with your thoughts that Zax Pro Animator is good at the animation part of things. Its horrible. Way too limiting and awkward in its methodology) Trying to reinvent the wheel is not very easy.
I wouldnt bother with it. (to each his own i guess)

I love the modeling, get pro modeler and animate in EI. That and turbosquid have gotten me pretty far. ( I do want to add tesla however )

Obviously in this thread, I am lobbying hard to make Paralumino’s tools EASY to get into for the ‘new to 3d’ artist. Im no programmer, but man oh man it just baffles me why getting ai import into these plugins or ANY plugin for that matter is so bleepin hard. They did it way back in 2.9 Why not now…

#238

I’m primarily a modeler and not so good at animation which is why preset animations are so appealing. I realise that preset animation is limited in the same sense that stock models may hold some appeal to animators.

Without the animation tools in ProAnimator, Promodeler is a poor substitute for the tools I already have and with such poor render quality is never going to be an option.

This really does illustrate how diverse Paralumino’s market is for these tools.

BB

#239

I know Zax is working on FBX support, so you can get those cool ProAnimator animations to render in other software. He’s also working on dramatically improving rendering speeds.

#240

Im not well versed on what FBX actually transfers and if its “editable”

Like Ive said before Im a huge fan of Zax (as a person as well) and Invigerator pro. I just find the presets in Pro Animator to be a bit cheesy. Like Zax says, it may take hours to do in a ‘real’ 3d program and he’s right. My question on most of his presets is why would I need to do that. And what happens when my client wants adjustments to the presets. Your back to ‘hand’ animating those. The nature of presets in most any application is how you tend to see them a lot. Most of us see some of the best animation out there, and can not detect any preset looking movement. How many of us have seen trapcodes Shine and 3d stroke used to death, and not very creatively. In fairness, I have also seen it used well and creatively. (the best ‘preset’ program in my opinion is clearly, Particle Illusion. They have thousands and their easy to adjust and make your own)

On the other hand, when I was doing more ‘corporate’ video work, videography so to speak. Where the budgets were not very high, a client would generally let ME come up with the idea and realize that major revisions would cost more. I could get away with a more ‘typical’ look.

I have had a number of conversations with Zax about capabilities with invigerator. I wanted him to incorporate a lathing option and possibly more.

To me he still has the single coolest export option that I can not do without, and thats the ability to ‘slice’ my model up into up to 6 individual ‘models’. Id love to have that increased. Your ability to individually animate 6 models that combine to make 1 shape
really allows for hi end complexity in hard surface animation.

I see where he’s going with this, he already has a large majority of the ‘entry level’ 3d artists in his pocket. Why not try and attract people wanting to go farther into a ‘true’ 3d
application. I wish him all the best.

my 4 cents