RayFire Tool

#501

actually this is using the PhysX solver which enables you to have veeery tiny pieces…reactor would quit when pieces get too small! No real size limitation with PhysX unless its only one face or so…

@ Steve: i tested PWrapper etc with the Blood feature/SuperSpray in RayFire. Works like a charm :slight_smile: We might get rid of the Blood option for now though because no one ever seemed to use it. PLUS SuperSpray can be SLOOOOW when u have 100s of impacts…We might add it in again with some proper solution just like the FumeFX and Afterburn features that are dropped for now too. We don´t wanna offer half baked features… :arteest:

#502

“We don´t wanna offer half baked features…”

No, that’s Autodesk’s job… :wink:

Seriously, though - I think the most general useful thing would be to have automation of particles spawning from general demolition.

I’m not sure what’s the best solution, whether to use position object and selected faces on the interiors of the fragments?

I’m not sure how well that would work on a slow demolition though - it’s a case of finding whats the best way to trigger particle birth at a per fragment level, so as ia frag moves, you get a chunk of particles falling off, possibly linking the birth rate to velocity initially?

So you’d get a trickle when it moves slowly, then a bit more as it accelerates and you get the initial demolition.

I guess the birth rate should then be capped or slowly die off, but maybe spikes when a fragments velocity increases dramatically (so when a frag hits the ground it kicks up a lot more debris.)

I guess all this particle stuff would only need to collide with the floor and maybe some proxy geometry (like other buildings) and maybe use some wind turbulence to get some variety going.

Just rambling now… :slight_smile:

  • Steve
#503

What is the timeframe for this new release?

I use a Quadro FX 4600… DO I get any advantage/disadvantage using this Physx engine with this card?

THx…

#504

Good news first: Blood stays in for now :slight_smile:

the current built for testers uses a PhysX engine that is not yet released and was given to us to test stuff in advance so basicly we have to wait until NVidia releases that built officially and then we go public with RF1.4

For now u can check out the downloadable built of PhysX at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/physxplugin there you should find any kinds of specifications.

#505

No x64 version :cry:
or did i overlook something?

#506

You right.
For now only 32 bit version.

#507

That’s a pain, when you consider heavy duty particle/physics scenes would be an ideal candidate for the extra memory of 64bit.

  • Steve
#508

^ Yup… ageia / nvidia is working on it i’m sure… but given when they started there’s really no reason it was 64 bit from the get go.

#509

AFAIK No, 260, 280, 9800 gtx, maybe that will change, but that is what nvidia specs say.

#510

Hey Steve, on your question about the slower demolition - there’s actually a much easier solution that I use all the time. The trick is to position particles, and then spawn by travel distance from them. So they don’t spawn at all when they don’t move, and they start spawning when it starts crumbling. Try that, it works great for me. Otherwise - I would like to have just two particle systems - one for rayfire, that just creates a pflow event whenever a projectile hits. I can easily build all kinds of effects afterwards. And a second system for fragmentations, that places particles on the inside faces.

#511

Hi,

that works really well - simple but effective! Thanks for the tip.

Cheers

Steve

#512

Hmm-I was just getting excited about the FumeFX intergration the overview demo suggested was there. So is it out completely?
I was also curious about the muzzle flash (FumeFX) possibilities in the mix-if/when thats production ready.

#513

Hi, We just purchased two copies of rayfire for a project we are working on at the moment (well the boss is pressing the purchase button now!). Great tool! but Im using it in demo mode now and im trying to use the Instant action feature on a simple champher box and I can do the first bullet hit (Reactor Debris - predefined, sparks, debris, smoke, bullets and impact flash) but when I choose the scond one I get a “Unable to convert undefined to type: Point3”.
I can sometimes cancel and reload and get a second hit in but its pretty buggy. The other thing is that when I do an instant action hit and then delete the layer the original box is not restored. It stays there with the hole in it.
I think this is an important feature to get right as directing timing and location of the hits is VERY important in production.
Cheers,

Jordan Walsh

#514

Problem might be if u have like a hundred hits to deal with because u have to simulate shotgun shooting with a faily low shooting frequency but like 50 small hits at once…50 pflow systems is nothing i would want to deal with…especially when its all unique systems so that pflow creates 50 particle engines…that just must go wrong. meybe u could automatily delete every particle engine after the first but i dont know…just sonds all messy.

for the inside thing thats an easy one to achieve yourself :slight_smile: just declare a pure white/black material in slot 2 of a multi sub as your fracturing/surface material and use a position object by grayscale using submat 2 or N.Should be slow with 2000 fractures but defintiely should work :slight_smile:

#515

Hi Anselm, thanks for that tip :wink:

On the pflow thingie - I didn’t mean create a new pflow for every hit, that’d be quite useless. I meant - one particle per hit, or more like 2 particles - one on the surface, and one bounced off. I think all effects can be derived from that.

edit: Another and maybe more practical approach could be a creation of a pflow with the bullets in it - we can easily collide them with the geometry manually, and create spawns from that.

#516

The particle request would go too much under the hood imo…RayFire is ment to be an easy to use application by adding objects and using the built in tools without any external knownledge about PhysX,Reactor,Particles & Fracturing. That´s what parts it from other products on the market where it´s almost impossible to create something that quick without deeper knownledge of what´s happening “under the hood” and/or scripting background or particle knownledge.

The quickest and easiest workaround for shooting would be to set up a particle system that "hits" the obstacle.  Then scrub thru your animation and use the Instant Action feature on every frame your particle is supposed to put a hole in the wall or what ever. Quickly tested it and it works just fine that way :) That would be the quickest way to combine both worlds as we don´t plan to get everybody trained on Particle Flow or TP here :D

See my 5 minutes solution to your request:

I simply aligned and linked the Find Target to the Gun Target and the Particle Flow Icon to the Gun Plane. So eveything follows nicely to what ever u animated in RayFire with a little more tweaking...

[img]http://www.3delicious.de/spielwiese/PFlow_As_Gun.gif[/img]

We might add that scene as a workaround example to the installation or the website support once 1.4 is out :wink:

EDIT: You could even set up a particle system of your choice and grab it as Custom Object to shot with and now every time a shot hits the obstacle you have that single spawned particle u wanted :wink:

with kindest regards,
Anselm

#517

Awesome and comprehensive, thanks Anselm!

#518

Hi, floopyb. Thanks for pointing me, in last updates I mainly improved fragmentation and dynamic simulation features and completely forgot about shooting stuff and Instant Action.
I just tried Instanct Action and all works fine, so problem might be in Your scene.
Please send it to me for tests, and I will try to find this problem and fix it.

#519

Hi
Sorry if this has been posted. What is the time line for the release of RF1.4.?
Would like to use the physics on a upcoming job and I don’t want to propose the concept without knowing when its going to be available.
Thanks
M

#520

Approximately 2 weeks.