Particle Flow Discussion

#5215

Hey nice one Ansi! I’ve kinda avoided Box3 for a while so a DVD on it would be great.

Thanks for thinking of something we need.

Steve

#5216

Hey everyone,

i am currently using the result of a realflow sim (wich is basically a puddle of fluid on a plane) and pipe it into PFlow to transform the liquid into a specific shape.

To do this i am using a Box 3 DataOp to store the closest point into the MXS Vector channel as the FindTarget "closest surface mode gives weird results and strange distribution.

While it seems to work and the shape does resemble the reference mesh object i created it has an offset in both rotation and position to the actual mesh object.

Any ideas what i might be doing wrong ? Tried playing with various settings and such but i cant seem to get it right.

Kind Regards,
Thorsten

#5217

Okay am seriously getting stuck here. I tried to workaround now by creating a second PFlow System just to check. And use “closest particle” with “use O1” and selected the second particleFlow.

The second flow is a standard flow with speed turned off.

And my particles are getting the same offset even in that setup :shock:

Any pointers ??

Regards,
Thorsten

#5218

okay. got it. For reference :

You have to turn off mesh object and switch to “Icon” mode for Maxscript Vector to work in Find Target :x

Regards,
Thorsten

#5219

The DVD will cover both boxes and rayfire and a little fume so it might be valuable for u anyways :slight_smile: The release is highly depending on how frequent i can record which depends on workload. So far im recording every day btw. :slight_smile:

#5220

Nice Anse, can’t wait to see the DVD, nice teaser :slight_smile:

instinct-vfx you can try using the transform matrix channel instead of the mxs vector too, you will get scale and rotation in this channel.

#5221

Congrats Anselm, finally we will have box#3 materials :thumbsup:
And now, who will take krakatoa? …especially those mega powerfull 1.5 features :wink:

#5222

Oh, Krakatoa will be featured too :slight_smile: just didnt have the time to lay out a road map for that yet so i dont know what i gonna do. Gotta get more familiar with the KCM stuff. For GI Joe we used box3 for everything…So yeah i gotta see what actually ends up being recorded on the Krakatoa side of things. But NOT showing any Krakatoa being emplozed at prime focus would be a shame :smiley:

#5223

Yous starting to sound like AD lol. Do you know how many times they say ‘road map’ for upcoming versions of max? ha ha

#5224

Speaking of “road maps” I´m open for suggestions! If you want to see something explained i will most likely see if i can make that happen if it is not among the topics already :slight_smile:

here´s another teaser:
www.3delicious.de/spielwiese/TUTORIALS/Box3_Nanomites.mov

This is nanomites how did NOT do it on “GI Joe”. I can´t tell due to NDA but how ever i have my own approach to show similar techniques, yet nothing close to the movie.

[ul]
[li]flocking driven by animated helpers[/li][li]smooth change of behavior when approaching a target close enough[/li][li]eating and eating-specific-flocking when hitting a target[/li][li]shading based on their distance to the target[/li][li]rendering including reflections(there are supposed to be metal) using the new Krakatoa 1.5.X[/li][/ul]kind regards,
Anselm

#5225

I would like to hear/know why did you use box #3 for it? (ofcourse you used it that means it wasn’t possible with normal pflow)

#5226

a similar effect would be possible with common particle flow operators. the speed decrease in calculation and render time would be hurting though since you would need more operators, forces, etc. this flow has 5 operators (not counting the birth-op, render-op and displays). rendering time on my 4 year old notebook(2 cores, 2gig ram) is under 5 seconds a frame with motionblur starting off with 50,000 particles.
It´s about stripping down what you have in your bag to the minimum of the math needed. I will provide a “pushed further” version that does the effect in 2 operators.

kind regards,
Anselm

#5227

Perhaps an insight into how you’d approach doing the whole chunk isolation detection they did for the eiffel tower but in max ? So that pieces that are no longer connected to the main object would break off and fall (because the nanomites have eaten stuff around the chunk).

I know digital domain used houdini but it would be cool if we could do this in max.

#5228 
Good that you bring that up :) To avoid confusion we at prime focus vfx have NOTHING to do with the eiffel tower. that was done with houndini and a good chunk of scripting by the fabulous artists over at digital domain! :)

making of eiffel tower:
[http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1572&Itemid=68](http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1572&Itemid=68)

here's what we had business with in the movie:
[http://www.evermotion.org/news/show/31447/prime-focus-vfx-helps-elevate-g-i-joe](http://www.*******.com/archives/news/gi-joe.html)

back to topic though for the unlinking and binding you should look no further then breaking binding in box2 using box3 and grayscale maps:

www.3delicious.de/spielwiese/BETA/yet-another-take-on-stanford_BurnAfterReading.mov
(will be covered on the DVD!)
little abstract but hopefully the idea passes along.

kind regards,
Anselm

#5229

I´m almost finished recording basic and medium level box#3 tutorials :slight_smile: i leave the master level advanced stuff to oleg, bobo or chalrey… they are the true champions of “boxing”.

  another sneak peak snippet (kinda hard to read but the guys duck down as the arrow attack):
  [http://www.3delicious.de/spielwiese/TUTORIALS/Box3_ShapeControl_FINISH.mov](http://www.3delicious.de/spielwiese/TUTORIALS/Box3_ShapeControl_FINISH.mov)
 
 u gonna find in this one:

[ul]
[li]controlling morph targets and blending them smoothly with the new shape control sub-operator[/li][li]baking particles[/li][li]a few notes on speeding up your workflow[/li][/ul]…and i updated my cg portfolio if anyone is interested in dropping by :slight_smile: (if u are not annoyed by me by now… ;-p )

kind regards and have a great sunday ya´ll,
Anselm

#5230

These are looking great Anselm! Put me down for a copy! Any idea when you’ll be releasing them?

#5231

That doesn’t mean it wasn’t possible with normal pflow at all. I’m finding the speed increase by not using normal pflow ops is insane… something as simple as position object with lock on emitter + animated shape is much much faster with box3… if you throw a grayscale map in there for speed, the standard pflow ops become useless by comparison. :smiley: I’ll see if I can get a video of this out eventually… maybe Ansi will be kind enough to do it instead. I don’t have box3 at home, only at work, so it’s a bit harder to take the time to do.

#5232

i hope to have it in stores for christmas :slight_smile: most companies buy random stuff at the end of the year for a better tax write off. i wanna catch that wave :slight_smile: im all about marketing :smiley: so i have to be done with recording in about 8 weeks (thats gonna be tough, im only 1/3 thru yet) and then i will send pre-release versions to magazines and such for (hopefully a good) review so its in the last issue of the year in cgworld magazine for example. TurboSquid will give me 20 copies for give away so what does not end up at a magaines or websites desk i can roll out to friends :slight_smile:

That doesn’t mean it wasn’t possible with normal pflow at all. I’m finding the speed increase by not using normal pflow ops is insane… something as simple as position object with lock on emitter + animated shape is much much faster with box3… if you throw a grayscale map in there for speed, the standard pflow ops become useless by comparison. :smiley: I’ll see if I can get a video of this out eventually… maybe Ansi will be kind enough to do it instead. I don’t have box3 at home, only at work, so it’s a bit harder to take the time to do

Ian has a good point here! I´m all about gettig it DONE, not about WITH WHAT you do it. I wanna show A way, not THE way. i highly encourage people to keep it as simple as possible, use legacy tools where ever u can. i say the parray is still awesome for what it does! how ever speed and workflow incease wise box#3 is a beast! it just takes a little while to tame it :slight_smile:

and yes, position object with lock on emitter using the box is already recorded and in the release line up :slight_smile:

kind regards,
Anselm

#5233

Hey peeps just made an update to my site & blog & thought you guys might wanna check it out.

The base background is from a tut in Pete Draper’s present book, so thanks for that mate.

The rest is just PFlow with FumeFX & Krakatoa.

The breakdowns is on my website
http://www.auxf18.dsl.pipex.com/Particles.htm

& the final animation is on my blog.
http://smactheblog.blogspot.com/

Cheers guys.

Steve

#5234

Wrote you a comment :wink: