Particle Flow Discussion

#4995

He has had issues in the past getting help from people on developing his tools, this is why his maps aren’t mental ray compatible. From his maps page:

mental ray is NOT supported. Why? Because Autodesk has not released enough information to properly translate all maps into mental ray. Until they decide to open up mental ray and Max connection’s SDK there won’t be any changes to this. Its regrettable and unfortunate but there is nothing I can do to help it.
So I am guessing there may be similar issues with developing this tool for mr. The real question is when will we have a Brazil version of it :P.

-Eric

#4996

Bercon, Great job man! The speed is great! spent the afternoon playing with it at work :slight_smile:

#4997

I’ve seen it yesterday at maxplugins.de and was making some tests and I’m really impressed! Thanks for sharing Bercon! :slight_smile:

#4998

how do u want to scale ur particles? just linear over time? maybe use 2 scale ops:

  • first scale op scales ur particles the way u wanna have em at start (200% Z scale or what ever)
  • second scale op is set to RELLATIVE SUCCESIVE so it keeps on scaling over the duration of the animation, in the case of my screenshot it is the Y axis that keeps on growing. If u wanna go a lil more crazy with the scales keep in mind that u can assign controllers on all tracks :slight_smile:

Jonathan: cool stuff!!! the shadows seem a lil off :slight_smile: reminds me of a setup from allan´s second DVD. nice breakdown. i looove breakdowns :smiley:

Bercon: way cool stuff there! can u share the spiral script eventually? i know bobo and nouch posted it once but i lost track of where it was located :frowning: < ansi is sad pants

over all: great to see some action in this thread again :slight_smile:

will post more beer pictures, oh wait, here is one attached: Anselm´s 27th BDay bash. NOTE: I´m wearing a DOOM tshirt witht he code for god mode IDDQD :wink: :-p

kind regards,
Anselm

#4999

I’d IDKFA and blow your immortal ass to smithereens! Cheers guys, I know what will kick the wasps round here - box#2 release! Cmon Oleg! :smiley:

#5000

Awesome bercon! Reminds me of this thing I did a while ago:

http://noouch.de/video/progplant1_test1.mov

Where I’m basically faking 2D metaball behavior by blurring the output and turning it into a 1bit image.

#5001

i actually have the IDKFA shirt too :smiley:

http://www.retrogt.com/retro-t-shirts/

#5002

Hi,

it’s easy enough to spawn particles based on the luminance of an image, but I wondered if it’s possible to have an image attract particles, like the find target op, but based on image rather than an object?

Thanks,

Steve

#5003

u can place them on the object by grayscale and store their location, then send em out and use a find target by script vector :slight_smile:

http://www.allanmckay.com/tut/tut_ObjAB.avi

#5004

Cool, thanks - unfortunately Allan’s download limit is exceeded, so I can’t see the vid.

My idea was to have it working from an animated map, so it wouldn’t be stored once it would constantly be hunting for the image sequence.

I Thought it might look quite interesting to have particles speeded towards an animated image, but I’m not sure if your suggestion would work with an animated sequence, or if there’s another solution…

Cheers,

Steve

#5005

Hey guys. I need to fairly quickly generate wispy cigarette smoke for a piece I’m working on. I’m mostly a sculptor/modeler, not a particles/fx guy, so while I don’t mind making it myself, I’m not particularly interested in learning all the ins and outs of PFlow…I just need the smoke to use as a design element.

Something like this:

I tried to download the cigarette smoke video tutorial on Allen McKay’s website, but apparently he’s exceeded his download limit, so I can’t get the video file from there. Also, there was quite a bit of discussion about creating cigarette smoke in the first pages of this thread, but those are from 2004, so all of the linked files (video files, max files, etc) are all broken/dead links. That’s really unfortunate, I wish people would attach files here instead of externally.

I really just want a max file I can keep in my asset library, which has nothing but cigarette smoke in it, ready to render. Any time I need that sort of smoke for a cigar or cigarette or incense, I can just jump into that file, tweak some wind properties or something, and bring the smoke into my project.

Or if anyone has the Allen McKay video available, PM me and I can give you my email.

Thanks

#5006

Thanks guys.

Mental ray version might be a bit tricky. I’ll have to look into it some time. Its on low priority however as I have BerconMaps update on the way and it’ll probably eat my allocated coding time.

I think Brazil version might be easier to do, when I get the Brazil SDK.

The milk coral scene was in the same folder as the plugin files: http://www.ylilammi.com/BerconMetaball/MilkCoral.7z

NOTE! It contains some custom spawn operator, just load the scene ignore the warning and replace the missing spawn operator with default spawn operator and set the spawn by distance option in that operator, then it should work just fine.

#5007

Bercon, that is beautiful!! I’m also crossing fingers for a Brazil version :slight_smile:

#5008

@Bercon
good job, thanks for sharing :wink:

@Steve Green
By image you can select some faces with Vol. Select, then use delete modifier and you have pure animated geometry by image luminance.

@DustinBrown
Everyone dreaming about MakeArt button :slight_smile:
Here is my very old project, maybe this helps:
arbat_FX_smoke06.zip

#5009

DeKo-LT, thanks man. I’m not looking for a Make Art button. PFlow is a bit esoteric IMO and I was just looking for a tutorial or something to point me in the right direction, like Allan’s video. Unless you know what you’re doing, you could easily spend an entire day playing Slider Jockey just to get the right effect, and that’s what I’m looking to avoid. I’d rather be drawing or sculpting.

#5010

Awesome stuff Bercon, did a quick test with 500,000 particles.
Would be great to be able to get the particle scale/size from the pflow :slight_smile:

#5011

slight OT: i added some more pics to my gallery on my website

#5012

Hey, nice test! I agree with you, would be nice to controle the size from pflow to add some random to the size and change it based on the flow.

#5013

Perhaps indeed.

#5014

A box#2 update, it is now in RC stage so it shouldn’t be too much longer :slight_smile:

How about some basic Newton physics:
Newton’s Cradle QT 8mb

A knock off of Ronald Fedkiw’s Two-way coupling of rigid and deformable solids (with Tamar Shinar and Craig Schroeder). I like the faking concave shapes ability :wink:

Donuts QT 18mb

Bercon, fine work them metaballs are a hoot!