Various useful compounds

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Cluster to WeightmapAuthor: Felix Geremus
As the name implies it converts clusters to weightmaps. Whats nice though is that it accepts all types of clusters (point,polygon,edge) and adds the ability to grow and/or smooth the resulting weightmap. Remember that you have to create the weightmap before you create the Icetree to make this work.

Go to the download page for screenshot explaining the usage of this compound.

local backup: Cluster to Weightmap.xsicompound
Create Copies along CurveAuthor: Felix Geremus
I don't think there is an easy way to do this with the build-in topology compounds plus it has some other nice features:

supports both open and closed curves nice controls to interactively position, scale and rotate your copies on the curve copies will be evenly spaced along the curve the copies nicely align to the curve, you shouldn't run into any problems with flipping normals on s-shaped curves. transfers UV's


Go to the download page for screenshot explaining the usage of this compound.

local backup: Create Copies along Curve.2.0.xsicompound
Neural NetAuthor: Felix Geremus
Another take on motiongraphic's currently most popular effect: emits particles and connects them with strands. This one is

pretty fast works both in a simulated and non-simulated environment two modes of stand creation: closest points & random turbulize and grow the strands


Go to the download page for screenshot explaining the usage of this compound. Here's a video from that page.

local backup: Neural Net.2.1.xsicompound
Emit from PolygonsAuthor: Felix Geremus
This compound is thought to be used in a non-simulated environment and the emitter mesh should ideally consist of quads only. The idea behind this compound was to quickly create coral like structures by emitting instances from polygon centers and scaling them according to the polygon they've been emited from. This helps to prevent instances from penetrating each other, and also results in a more natural, organic look [..]

Go to the download page to read more about the usage of this compound.

local backup: Emit from Polygons.1.0.xsicompound
Quantize ValuesAuthor: Felix Geremus
This one is a bit techy, but proved useful to me. It takes a set or array of scalar values and spits out quantized values based on a quantization step. An image (hopefully) explains more than thousand words :)

Go to the download page for that image which explains the usage of this compound.

local backup: Quantize Values.xsicompound

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Mossman
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Joined: 15 Dec 2009, 09:12

Various useful compounds

Post by Mossman » 28 Mar 2012, 14:51

Hey everyone,

I wanted to share some of my compounds here, which I recently posted on my blog. I really tried to make them work as flawless as possible but let me know if you have any issues or ideas for improvement.

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Mossman
Posts: 19
Joined: 15 Dec 2009, 09:12

Post by Mossman » 28 Mar 2012, 14:54

Cluster to Weightmap

As the name implies it converts clusters to weightmaps. Whats nice though is that it accept all types of clusters (point,polygon,edge) and adds the ability to grow and/or smooth the resulting weightmap.
Remember that you have to create the weightmap before you create the Icetree to make this work.

Image
Image

Cluster to Weightmap

Create Copies along Curve

I don’t think there is an easy way to do this with the build-in topology compounds plus it has some other nice features:
  • supports both open and closed curves
  • nice controls to interactively position, scale and rotate your copies on the curve
  • copies will be evenly spaced along the curve
  • the copies nicely align to the curve, you shouldn’t run into any problems with flipping normals on s-shaped curves.
  • transfers UV’s
Image
Image

Create copies along curve

Neural Net

Another take on motiongraphics currently most popular effect: emits particles and connects them with strands. This one is
  • pretty fast
  • works both in a simulated and non-simulated environment
  • two modes of stand creation: closest points & random
  • turbulice and grow the strands
Image

Here is a quick viewport capture of 750 particles being emited per second, each growing 30 connections to its neighbours:


Neural Net

Emit from Polygons

This compound is thought to be used in a non-simulated environment and the emitter mesh should ideally consist of quads only. The idea behind this compound was to quickly create coral like structures by emitting instances from polygon centers and scaling them according to the polygon they’ve been emited from. This helps to prevent instances from penetrating each other, and also results in a more natural, organic look. A more detailed explanation of the various parameters can be found on my blog...

Image

Emit from Polygons

Quantize Values

This one is a bit techy, but proved useful to me. It takes a set or array of scalar values and spits out quantized values based on a quantization step. An image (hopefully) explains more than thousand words :)

Image

Quantize Values

Have fun!
Last edited by Mossman on 02 Apr 2012, 12:34, edited 10 times in total.

iamVFX
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Re: Various useful compounds

Post by iamVFX » 28 Mar 2012, 15:03

Neural Net looks awesome, thank you! :ymhug:

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Mossman
Posts: 19
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Re: Various useful compounds

Post by Mossman » 28 Mar 2012, 15:47

Still trying to pack everything into one post...
Last edited by Mossman on 28 Mar 2012, 16:51, edited 2 times in total.

iamVFX
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Re: Various useful compounds

Post by iamVFX » 28 Mar 2012, 16:08

There is a problem with Neural Net compound, - Number of Particles per Second rate type doesn't work on simulation or modeling stack

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Mossman
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Re: Various useful compounds

Post by Mossman » 28 Mar 2012, 16:18

You have to activate "time varying", otherwise all partices are emitted on the same spot. It works the same way in the normal "Emit from geometry" node, only that it's on there by default...

iamVFX
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Joined: 24 Sep 2010, 18:28

Re: Various useful compounds

Post by iamVFX » 28 Mar 2012, 16:24

Mossman wrote:You have to activate "time varying", otherwise all partices are emitted on the same spot. It works the same way in the normal "Emit from geometry" node, only that it's on there by default...
Yes, it's not checked by default, I haven't noticed this. Thanks again! :)

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sant0s
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Re: Various useful compounds

Post by sant0s » 29 Mar 2012, 11:57

the "Create Copies along Curve" rocks and i was trying to do something similar the last days - it works but your is much more smooth!
have you tried making a strand version? same thing that you can do with that compound, but with strands made out of a curve.

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Rork
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Re: Various useful compounds

Post by Rork » 29 Mar 2012, 15:25

Hi Felix,

Kudos again for sharing these again. They're a great addon (pun intended) to the ICE tools. :-bd

rob
SI UI tutorials: Toolbar http://goo.gl/iYOL0l | Custom Layout http://goo.gl/6iP5xQ | RenderManager View http://goo.gl/b4ZkjQ
So long, and thanks for all the Fish!!

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ActionArt
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Re: Various useful compounds

Post by ActionArt » 29 Mar 2012, 18:03

Great stuff as always! :D

Thanks Mossman.

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pdesopo
Posts: 54
Joined: 08 Jul 2011, 23:49

Re: Various useful compounds

Post by pdesopo » 01 Apr 2012, 05:15

Thanks Felix,

particularly loving Neural!
I'm trying it and I've a question: I want to turbulize the particles and animate the grow parameter at the same time.
It works, but the growing acts weird. The grow works only when the turbulize is near to zero, like from 0.016 to 0 and at that point there's no much time to see the grow transition.
I'm connecting a Turbulize Mesh to Execute on Emission, I guess I'm trying to turbulize the particles in the wrong way.
Attachments
87AF.jpg

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Mossman
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Re: Various useful compounds

Post by Mossman » 02 Apr 2012, 12:33

Your're right, I've updated the download link with a new version which should work better.
Don't know what kind of effect you wan't to achieve, but remember that if you turbulize the particles "on emission", your only modifying their initial position, so they won't move or anything like that. If you want to turbulize the particles movement, you have to plug the turbulize into a normal execution port. In this special case though it's recommendet to modify the pointpositions before the emission, otherwise you will end up with something like this:

Image

In this case you modify the point positions after the strands have already been drawn, thus you get these strange connections to the location where the point used to be. Modifying the point positions before the strands are drawn works fine:

Image

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pdesopo
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Re: Various useful compounds

Post by pdesopo » 03 Apr 2012, 23:21

Mossman,

thanks a lot for the update. From your screen grab I see you're using a simulated Ice tree whereas I'm using a non-simulated one.
Anyhow, I've started from scratch using the latest update you posted and everything it's working fine now. I'm also adding some Mootzoid EmTools compounds and some other Scatter Tools compounds, glad to see that everything works fine together.

SpaceAce
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Joined: 06 Nov 2013, 17:16

Re: Various useful compounds

Post by SpaceAce » 06 Nov 2013, 18:35

Seems this post and is long since forgotten...hopefully someone comes back to life ;)

Any chance this would work if I pulled in another point cloud to drive Neural net? Like another particle Sim? And if so how would one go about that? As the emitter is looking for a geo as a souce?

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