knit the strand

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Knit Strand ProAuthor: Anto Matkovic
This plugin by Kristinka Hair author Anto Matkovic is a newer version of the 2009 release »Knit the Stand«, which generates realistic procedural fabric by interweaving ICE strands following the UV lines of a given NURBS surface. For increased realism it supports customizable weaving patterns, position noise, tip flattening etc..

The new version adds some major features: better distribution, now strand size always fits between neighboring strands, whatever deformation is used lighter in render time: strand segments are generated sparingly, also there are built-in strand resolution attributes default is spread in X-Z plane. NURBS surface is optional, strands will fit to NURBS only if NURBS is connected diagonal distribution, like common fabrics. Should be much faster than old one. Fitting on strand size rely on simple, 'parallel' computation, not on geometry query by distance.

Thumnail image above (large version) was created by Piotrek Marczak using the old version of this plugin. Follow the 5+ page thread on si-community (Note: Download of new version is on page 4 of that thread).

local backup: knit_strand_pro.rar

Discussions about SOFTIMAGEs© Interactive Creative Environment©
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farhaad_yousefi
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Re: knit the strand

Post by farhaad_yousefi » 18 Jun 2009, 10:14

woooooow..fantastic job..man..!!! :ymparty:

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owei
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Re: knit the strand

Post by owei » 18 Jun 2009, 11:42

Thanks Mathaeus..!

I´ve put it into the downloadsection:

viewtopic.php?f=39&t=84

cherers,
oliver

Letterbox
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Re: knit the strand

Post by Letterbox » 18 Jun 2009, 12:27

Hello Mathaeus,

first of all very well done :)

but lets make this a different kind of post I'm curious what made you come up with this as the idea to develop into a compound.

and what challenges did you face along the way?

Cheers
Terry

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Mathaeus
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Re: knit the strand

Post by Mathaeus » 18 Jun 2009, 21:48

Letterbox wrote: but lets make this a different kind of post I'm curious what made you come up with this as the idea to develop into a compound.
It's adaptation of my existing compounds for creating a human hair, so basic idea was hair creation. By the way, it's all very simple math behind.
In the past, I did a lot of polygon hairs as a game artist - everything of that that was recognized as good, had some kind of rigging or modeling stack behind. For hairs, fur, fish scales, cities, woven furniture, all that stuff that has recognizable flow, but also a lot of small details, I think it's proper way to use the mix of procedural and hand modeling. In my opinion, making all these details isn't job for human hand.
ICE, especially unsimulated ICE trees, seems to be a right tool - it's easy to combine creation by hand and procedurals, also there is always choice to use canned toolbars, or to change everything at will.

Woven furniture idea isn't new, I tried to do exactly the same a long time ago with loops in POV-Ray, this trial is still live: http://www.irtc.org/irtc/irtc?_n&pg=Vie ... ptwife.jpg. Please don't laugh :), it's twelve years old image.
Letterbox wrote: and what challenges did you face along the way?
As usually with Softimage, lack of 'simple examples'. Mentioned POV-Ray had about five hundred of code examples with it, all focused on artist creation. On the other side, Softimage examples looks like more a programmer's show reel - before few years I had a hard time to figure out that I don't need SCOPs for my rigging needs, even more, rig without SCOPs became faster...
So this time I started to build my own examples, step by step. Hopefully, the old Sofitmage.net had enough work from other people, easy to understand, because a lot of these were created by beginners. After Helge Mathee released his strand nodes, finally I had the ground to build my own stuff over.

Letterbox
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Re: knit the strand

Post by Letterbox » 19 Jun 2009, 10:17

Actually I didn't laugh, more i looked at the ram that you had back then, and look at whats needed today ! Can you even get vista or xp with 64mb working???

I'd heard of Paint shop pro, and was told it was an excellent alternative to PS, pity its not around as it once was. I tried the corel, but not for me.

It's also nice to see --someone-- is still using nurbs.. The more i use them the better i like them, and some things just work so well, i only wish one day they'd upgrade the whole nurbs package.



I must say that the hardest thing for me, the lack of examples, even with those excellent Helgee ones, the type etc... is the utter lack of docs or explanation and scenes covering the different options in a clear way, I wonder if thats why he has problems with people "not getting it". For me an overview pdf should have been written, that's is much more a this is the design strategy, this is what and where things go, eg this is why there's unsim and sim, strands, volume, etc, and this is the logic and reasoning behind it, and why you'd need it, and for what solutions you use it for.

From my (and this is all from my perspective) that you have to spend a serious amount of time digging and testing (and RBD's seem hardly touched)... which is always hard not only because it laborious, but the time it takes, mainly the problems always come down to time constraints and docs.

The thing i do like about ice, is that in some ways its a very simplified way of making things 'open source' of sorts that allow you to 'investigate' compounds and rewire them. Like the pages you pointed me to before. They were understood, but "freezing" was not a option, as one curve was dependent on another and so on so if one manipulated the first all get done thru the chain. But because of the openness of ice, it did allow me to re-wire to suit the job. That solution, was excellent, as it was fast, and simple to do, probably impossible else where and it got the job done.

But it nice to hear that you too found some of the same problems, I think that gives hope to some of us. (specifically me :) )

PS Thanks for taking the time to reply to it all.

PPS Looking forward to seeing what else you are going to dig up from the past :D

Cheers
Terry

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Mathaeus
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Re: knit the strand

Post by Mathaeus » 19 Jun 2009, 21:26

Letterbox wrote: It's also nice to see --someone-- is still using nurbs.. The more i use them the better i like them, and some things just work so well, i only wish one day they'd upgrade the whole nurbs package.
Well, for now, NURBS surfaces are only choice for creating such compounds in ICE, at least in an easy way. Actually I'm using meshes as control objects, whenever the NURBS surface is complex. Perhaps everyone knows procedure for that, anyway here is again:

- select NURBS surface, go to model > Create > PolyMesh > Nurbs To Mesh
- in PPG, choose, From Control Hull: On, Stitch: Off
- freeze newly created mesh
- select NURBS surface, go to animate panel, go to Shape> select shape key, select your mesh.

Now the NURBS surface will stick to mesh, so it's possible to use mesh modeling tools, raycast selections, so on.
Procedure will work only with opened NURBS surfaces, both in U and V. Mesh and NURBS surface should stay with same number of points all the time.

coolroy
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Re: knit the strand

Post by coolroy » 21 Jun 2009, 20:11

thats awesome... thank you man!

saf
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Re: knit the strand

Post by saf » 22 Jun 2009, 15:54

yeah awesome strand to see....how you made that :-bd

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REZI-st
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Re: knit the strand

Post by REZI-st » 13 Jul 2009, 22:06

very nice work :-bd I like it so much :x
David Řezáč (REZI-st)
Czech XSI freelancer

AlternativA adventure game (Lead 3d/2d)
My wip/final thread

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eternal art
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Re: knit the strand

Post by eternal art » 14 Jul 2009, 02:20

great compound , thanks for sharing .
3D Supervisor - Production House .

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druitre
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Re: knit the strand

Post by druitre » 21 Jul 2009, 15:54

owei wrote:Thanks Mathaeus..!

I´ve put it into the downloadsection:

viewtopic.php?f=39&t=84

cherers,
oliver
Great compound! Shouldn't it be in the ICE/compounds section though? I would not look for this in a models/scenes directory if I were searching, probably.

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Mathaeus
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Re: knit the strand

Post by Mathaeus » 21 Jul 2009, 22:07

Well I think it would be nice if someone is willing to upload another model in "models" section, so I can't see *two* of my works at front page :) It's boring :)

Anyway, I did some real work with this compound, then I found it's more convenient to have "real" meshes in viewports, instead of rendering strands from time to time. That what you see in image, it's ICE strand extrusion mesh, created from strands, with MT_strand_nodes addon - together with additional compounds for applying vertex colors to meshes.
There are a few new compounds with different patterns too.
As soon I'll have time to make all that stuff more clear - for now it's a pretty kitchen sink, I created all of them on the fly - I'll post them.

In the meantime, if someone has a good idea what to do with strands, *and* it's easy for me to do that :), I'm listening :)

Image

Deracus
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Re: knit the strand

Post by Deracus » 22 Jul 2009, 09:44

Oh my gosh...that´s nothing but awesome!!!

I had a look into that stuff some days before...but haven´t had enough time to do something more serious with it.
But as soon, as i will find some spare time from work, i´m going to start with some furniture...so this could become some stuff for you to show what else can be done :)

Anyway...thanks for everything...amazing work...and that for free!

Deracus
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Re: knit the strand

Post by Deracus » 09 Oct 2009, 13:24

Hi

i´m experimenting with your compound right now and i can reproducably crash the scene by simply trying to render the upper inside of your model.
I just loaded it into xsi and zoomed a bit in...then i rotaded the cam so i can se the inside of the upper whole and dragged a region to render it --> Freeze.

Am i the only one having this problems?
I tried it with a fresh scene...same error...

you have to zoom in quite a bit...otherwise it renders without errors

edit:

Inspected the problem even more...and it seems to be more of a problem with Mental Ray and strands...
I build another Nurbs-Mesh, applied your compound and zoomed a bit in. It rendered without hassle....then i started playing with the settings of your compound to see, what drives what. So i tried to raise the "multiply" value to 7...and it froze again...

It doesn´t even start to render...the progress bar in the lower right stops at 0% and XSI.exe creates something like 50 - 60 percent CPU-Usage on both cores. Closing the region or hitting the small X right at the progress bar leads to the heading "cancled" in it, but XSI is stuck then...you can close some ppg´s and stuff like that, but you can´t open anything nor do something else....

I´m confused by now...

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Hirazi Blue
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Re: knit the strand

Post by Hirazi Blue » 09 Oct 2009, 16:27

Which version of (X)SI are you using?
Stay safe, sane & healthy!

Deracus
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Re: knit the strand

Post by Deracus » 09 Oct 2009, 18:20

XSI 7.01

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