PowerPlugins: Dante Team

#21

I’m trying to Uwe… got just a few too many irons in the fire… one of which is pretty big. Don’t worry though, I will be returning to this particle class soon and you’re welcome to join in.

#22

Hola amigos, I’m new on this forum, I’m really interested in participate in the Dante experience, please sign me up.

my English is very basic, but i can read ok. and write a little.

thanks to Brian for start this forum.

Diego.

#23

Could I ask a dumb question? It doesn’t appear that sprites are supported in Dante so I was wondering if there was a way to “fake” sprites by mixing Dante with scripting. Specifically is there a way to tell the Dante Particles (lets say an emitted plane) to face a specific camera normal?

I guess my real question is the particle engine open to the scripting interface? I haven’t made it all the way through the documentation so if it’s in there, feel free to tell me to RTFM!

=)

#24

i don’t know about scripting (from the look of the accesible animation channels i think there is much you can do), but if you add a plane (or other object for that matter) look here:
Control Groups Panel -> General Settings -> lower right corner. Under Alignment you can tell the emitted Particles to look at the camera. (always the Camera that is active, i think).

i hope that is what you searched :slight_smile:

#25

Brian…

Dante can support a “limited” form of fake sprite…but its not as integrated as Maya’s implementation of sprites in OpenGL. Simply use Ubershape to create a plane for your spirte card. Keep the resolution settings for the plane low, and size it accordingly.

Parent the ubershape plane to Dante…then you’ll need to activate object emission by selecting the “plane” in the control groups window and by changing the type of emitted particle from lines to objects. Now Dante will start to emit uberplanes instead of particles points.(See my previous class about object emission).

In the control groups window, there will be a popup menu for particle object alignment. Select align to camera. Unfortunately, the alignment will only take place at render time. One of the things I planned to touch on during our Dante class is to influence Blair to integrate better sprite capabilities into Dante rather than having to use this method.
It works in a pinch though.

As for Xpressionist scripting… any channel in Dante that can be animated can be affected by XP…however the issue here is Dante’s limited ability to track and modify particles on a per particle basis…I’ve discussed this once before to Blair…and I think its time to mention it to him again. Per particle control, if its possible in EI, would be a great benefit… right now, the particle cloud is seen as a single object. The good news is you can modify initial emission settings to randomize things… but without per particle expressions, your limited in what you can do with XP and Dante.

#26

Thank you for the response Brian. It’d be great to add some of this stuff to Dante, I really like the plugin.

I was trying to build some sprite based clouds using Dante and I had a couple ideas to play with Xpressionist to add some control. I have a habit of thinking with a Maya thought process inside of EIAS.

I’m conisidering Blaster now too. The funny thing is, I don’t have any work related to explosions at this time but I’m having fun playing with this. I mean, what’s more fun than blowing stuff up? Ha!

#27

Yes… the workflow and thought process is different between the two packages… but the principles are still the same. The advantage Maya has is the particle system is integrated while Dante must contend with the plugin API. However… don’t stop thinking in Maya. There are alot of Maya processes I’d like to see in EI…

If you start playing with Mr. Nitro 2 you’ll get a rough idea of how Blaster can work… although Blaster has much greater explosion control. Blaster can even act as a hard surface dynamics engine in a pinch… though Ramjac’s Rodeo will probably eclipse that by a wide margin.

Only big drawback about Blaster is you’ll have to score your models and break them up in advance within your modeling package. It isn’t entirely automatic…

Brian

#28

Thanks Uwe, that is exactly what I was looking for! Somehow I missed your response but I really appreciate the help!

Can I ask another question, is there an easy way to tell by looking, what animation channels are available? I’m assuming its an icon in the project window?

#29

in the project window click on the little blueish triangle in front of your dante group (that’s the main animation channels), then on the little triangle in front of sockets (that’s what each plugin opens individually for you). all of this can be used in XP.

#30

Hey Brian,

Im in too.

Tomas

#31

Sounds good Thomas…

Its been unfortunate that this class has slipped through the cracks. I got hit from all directions for my time and I had to sacrifice something. Its my full intention to reactive this class soon.

#32

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.