46 replies to this topic

[spedler]

One thing that would make the system easier to use would be contextual help and a short indexed video tutorial on each component because people will be going through the first few times and wonder what does this option do or what does this one do. Also if you can include a set of presets that one can use immediatly and these would be useful for someone to look at to see how they were assembled. Flocking for example is very popular special effect that people want.

Contextual help is simply not possible right now. This isn't the system's fault, it's (IMO) a major failing of the C4D help system that third-party plugins can't make use of it at the moment. What we should be able to do is a link to the help file from each component, which is not as good but the best we can do ATM.

We accept the need for plenty of training vids, of course. We will also provide some prebuilt scenes for users to dissect, but presets aren't really needed in the way that TP needs them, because it's so much easier to set something up with this system than it is with TP.

[OD1]

Yeah

[dataflow]

At the moment, if the object moves, the particles move with it (that was a desired feature). But I can easily make that optional so that if you move the object, the particles don't follow it and can then stay where they are or be moved somewhere else.

thats sound good.
i was thinking that if that was possible then someone could for eg.. animate a dog shaking water off its back.

thats just 1 eg im sure there would be more

[slouchcorp]

Should be possible once they are attached to the surface you can then set up a further action to do something elce so in that case let gravity effect them while the body shakes

Mike

[deepshade]

Q:
Is there still the same C4D limit on the number of particles?

There was a procedural tree in one of the demos - was that a single mesh?
I've been waiting for Samir to release a separate DPIT mesher for a very long time. DPIT is too expensive for that alone.
You say you don't want to compete with DPIT, but there is definitely a gap in then market as the current C4D metaball is now so behind the times, it doesnt work with many mograph effectors and is virtually useless (too slow) for anything complex or even slightly realistic with particles.

Edited by deepshade, 06 November 2011 - 12:40 AM.

[spedler]

Is there a limit on total particle numbers in Cinema? There is a limit on birthrate (10000) but I don't know about total number.

I've put a total limit of 10,000,000 particles on the system but there's no real reason for that. It's really only limited by memory. My own tests show that going too high will grind the entire system to a halt because Windows starts swapping memory to disk and it doesn't play nicely then. So I set this limit but could remove it, because people with newer, more powerful machines with more RAM than me could use more particles than I can. But there's no upper limit on birthrate, you want to emit a million particles per second or more, you can.

I'd love to do a mesher for it. Mike and I discussed this briefly in the past and we decided to get version 1 out soon which means version 2 may have the mesher, but it won't be in the initial release.

[slouchcorp]

The tree is seperate meshes made up of 4 different particle systems

I'd love a new mesher too hopefully for v2.

Mike

[StCanas]

And my questions from post #13?

Cheers
Karl

[spedler]

And my questions from post #13?

Cheers
Karl

Sorry, missed those. Price I don't know yet, we haven't discussed it so I can't say any more at the moment.

There's no specific facility at this time to make an object into a deflector but of course you could do that with dynamics and I will probably be adding a separate collision system in which an object could then become a deflector by adding a tag, for example.

If you turn a particle stream then you do get some flattening or compression of the flow (same thing happens with the standard C4D emitter). You can reduce that to a great extent in a number of ways in the system, depending on how you are changing the direction - in the most simple case, using a direction modifier you can just reduce the acuteness of the turn and that will be enough in most cases to maintain the flow shape.

(Ideally what you would do is incorporate something analogous to the differential on a car to ensure that particles on the inner side of the turn move less then those on the outer side, so that the stream maintains its shape, but I have a feeling that the maths involved in that are complex. So maybe in the longer term.)

[mmVRay]

Many jobs require custom setups but some are jobs are candidates for presets that can be customized by changing parameters. For example Maya has a number of new presets for fireworks which make it easy to create them. Is this a framework upon which someone, either you or the user, could build presets and save them?

[StCanas]

Thanks for the answers.

There's no specific facility at this time to make an object into a deflector but of course you could do that with dynamics and I will probably be adding a separate collision system in which an object could then become a deflector by adding a tag, for example.

That's what I seem to need particles to do the most so it would be a very welcome feature. As for how much, is it better to sell a few at a high price or a lot at a lower price... Mmmm... :-)

Cheers
Karl

Edited by StCanas, 06 November 2011 - 07:35 AM.

[spedler]

Many jobs require custom setups but some are jobs are candidates for presets that can be customized by changing parameters. For example Maya has a number of new presets for fireworks which make it easy to create them. Is this a framework upon which someone, either you or the user, could build presets and save them?

The thing is, presets as we understand them aren't quite right for this sort of system. It's all object-based so what you really need are some prebuilt scenes which can serve as the base for expansion. In that sense, my own feeling is that a .lib4d file with some common setups - some simple, some complex - is in keeping with the C4D way of doing things. And people are familiar with it from TP. Is that the sort of thing you meant?

Steve

[mmVRay]

What I mean is that you have created some building blocks which helps but the more drag and drop kind of presets built from these assemblies you can provide the more popular it will be I think. In other words encapsulate your expertise in the form of presets that can be used by the non expert.

[morpheus]

Looks pretty good.
I find I can do all of what is there with TP anyways, but it definitely looks like a great one to have for someone just starting out.
And does this have a particle limit? And how is the viewport speed? Simple Particles for example is blindingly fast, but has much less options than this.

A

Edited by morpheus, 07 November 2011 - 05:20 AM.

[ahven]

Looks good, modular and definitely faster than Xpresso setup.
Some clear demo examples would be nice.

Nowadays it´s important for me to design particle animations
faster way in Cinema 4D not in AE so this is worth every
penny.

Edited by ahven, 07 November 2011 - 11:37 AM.

[spedler]

Looks pretty good.
I find I can do all of what is there with TP anyways, but it definitely looks like a great one to have for someone just starting out.
And does this have a particle limit? And how is the viewport speed? Simple Particles for example is blindingly fast, but has much less options than this.

A

Sorry for the delay in answering, busy coding today :-)

I posted somewhere about the particle limit, but I can't remember where now! The gist of it was, there's currently a 10 million particle limit per emitter for no reason other than anything more slowed my machine (3 year old PC with 8Mb RAM) too much. I'm going to take the limit out, in which case users will have to understand that if you overdo it you can set aside all physical memory, in which case Windows at least is not happy at all.

Viewport speed is nothing to write home about. This is simply because there's so much going on under the hood. Because questions and actions work on a per-particle basis there's a lot of iteration over the total number of particles, which inevitably makes it slower than we'd all like. (And, of course, I'm running a lot of debug code at the moment, so there's plenty of scope for optimisation.) You sacrifice some speed for a lot more control, I guess. Faster and bigger machines will do better, of course.

[deepshade]

If there are complex actions taking place
is there a way to limit the frames these calculations take place on (if they are only required for a limited time)
rather than having the run all the time?

[spedler]

The actions don't run all the time but the questions are per-particle so are tested each frame until they pass. That's actually pretty fast because nothing is done to affect the screen display. If they do pass, an action is called. This, in most cases, just affects what a modifier will do to the particles, and since the modifier works on each frame anyway, not much extra time is lost.

The critical thing is that the questions and actions are almost all (there are one or two exceptions) intended to act on individual particles, giving you the maximum amount of control. Unfortunately this does require a fair bit of iteration through particle sets, which can't be avoided.

[ruimac]

I know that a lot of people asked this before but... any prediction about the release date and price? :-)

Rui Batista

[toulouse]

Tarzan, want. Must save up banana leaves with Jane and Cheetah.