Pflow Masterclass at Siggraph 2006

#1

Hi just a quick heads up for anyone who is attending Siggraph in Boston this year. I’ll be giving a 3dsmax Masterclass there on Particle Flow. I’ve split my session up into two halves, here is a quick breakdown as to what each section will offer.

Scripted Tesla Coil (Lightning) System
In this 40 minute class I’ll be showing a scripted Pflow system that aims to re-create one of those crazy Tesla Coil doodads that scientist have a habit of building in their back gardens. Here’s a picture of one such “mini” coil in action…

Crazy eh :slight_smile:

This Pflow system uses quite a number of inter connected scripted Operators in conjunction with standard Pflow techniques to create a pretty cool simulation of one of these high voltage spectacles. I’m just putting the wraps on this system now, I’ll try and post some images, and also an animation of it in action in a few days time.
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Pflow/Dataflow Based Tornado System[/b]
The second 40 minute section is on a Tornado system that uses Orbaz’s new Box#3 system Dataflow. Dataflow allows you to create your own hard wired Operators from a set of sub-operators in pretty much the same kind of workflow as with the Pflow Particle View. The benefit here is that there Operators are easier to put together than scripted Ops, and they are a whole magnitude faster to calculate.

This class will not show a fully rendered up final product, but rather three custom operators that create the basic Tornado system that you can then go on and embelish to your hearts content. Still, I think it will amply demonstrate just why Dataflow is going to change Particle Flow usage across the board. I’ll post an animation of this in action in a couple of days.

Here is a link to a PDF that lists all of the classes available. My class is on day two (Wednesday 2nd August) from 9.00am to 10.30 am.

http://images.autodesk.com/adsk/files/final_programs_and_event_details.pdf

We (CG Academy) will also be selling our boxed sets outside the class at a show special price of 15% off. If you only want single DVDs, you can pick those up (again for 15% off) at the Autodesk stand within the exhibition hall. Hope you can make it along to the class, it should be cool.

Cheers

#2

A quick update on the class material. As promised, here is a preview video of the Tornado segment of the class. Click on the image below to watch :wink:

Cheers

#3

And here’s another update as promised. This time its the Tesla Coil system. This one is built up from a whole suite of Pflow Script Operators, plus of course standard Particle Flow Operators.

Click on the image below to download the Quicktime .Mov

Cheers

#4

Looks great Chris for those people lucky enough to attend Siggraph this year.
You’ve got some really interesting stuff going on there. For the rest of us on the other side of the world, we can only hope the content of this year becomes available via some other medium. Fingers crossed.

cheers,
Matt.

#5

Yeah, its a long way to travel just for a class, for sure. Those who cannot make it should be covered though, in fact doubly so in this case…

Autodesk I beleive is videoing the class and it will be available on DVD (with note) soon after the event. I think that DVD is not to expensive either, so definately worth considering.

Both systems being demo’d are in effect v1.0. There are a lot of extra things that can be done with each system to make them more feature complete. For Siggraph what I have right now is good enough. I have to teach each system in roughly 40 minutes (+ Notes supplied on the class DVD). This is not that much time really, and anything too complex would have been overkill for those classes. I simply would not be able to cover everything in 40 mins, as it is right now time will be very tight.

So, a few months after Siggraph (probably near Christmas) I hope to release a CG Academy DVD on each system (Advanced level) that teaches a 2.0 version of each one, with a bunch of enhancements and refinements that simply could not be fit into the 40 minute timeframe at Siggraph.

For instance the Tornado system right now is bare bones. It does create a good stable Tornado, but there is not as much control as there could be. I plan on making control over the Tornado be very very fine and also hopefully totally animatable. Also right now it does not take into account lifting heavy debris (cards etc) or for instance stripping tiles and other parts from a building say. These kind features/enhancements and more are planned for the CGA DVDs later this year.

So, if you can attend the class at the show, see you there and also we can have a chat afterwards. If not maybe get the Autodesk DVD soon after the show. And if you want to see each system taken to the max, get the CGA DVDs when they become available later this year.

Cheers

#6

Looking good Chris, i really like what you did with particle flow for the tornado system, especially how the storm actually sweeps up the particles from the ground. A nice example would be to replace the ground particles to things like real debris, that would make for a really convincing usage of pflow.

#7

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