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Fancy Charts

Posted: 16 May 2011, 20:38
by Chris_TC
I'm putting this in the tutorial section because a) I'm planning to do a tutorial on it and b) this is a work in progress that will get updated every now and then.

It's a pretty simple compound right now, and it's probably not too useful. More of a toy than anything, and a learning exercise. If you have suggestions, let me know. I intend to add more functionality and different chart types (line chart, pie chart etc.) later. Unfortunately, ICE modeling does not yet have a text node, so I don't think procedural labels are possible at the moment.

Most of the values (including the data set) can be negative. The data set can be scalar values with decimals, and it can be comma-separated or white space separated. Just play with the settings, they are pretty straightforward.

P.S.: The compound should applied to an empty polymesh.
Image

Re: Fancy Charts

Posted: 16 May 2011, 23:15
by Daniel Brassard
Interesting compound Chris, thanks for sharing.

I see some potential for texturing like skyscrapers, Kids blocks and other shapes that can be used for commercial work and advertising.

For the text, letters can be defined proceduraly like any polygons in ICE. For now, this is a long process unfortunately. Maybe a bump or displacement texture can do the trick.

I would also investigate the "Create Extrusion along Strands" compound. Feeding each "bar" with a text shape input to the "custom shape name" port of the compound should give you similar result.

Dan

Re: Fancy Charts

Posted: 17 May 2011, 17:53
by ActionArt
Thanks! This has a lot of potential.

Re: Fancy Charts

Posted: 18 May 2011, 19:47
by Chris_TC
@Daniel: Thank you, I will look into this compound.

I just noticed that ICE has a Primitives node that can create a cube. So chances are I'll simplify my compound, which currently builds the bars from scratch.
For now however, I'm working on the pie chart. ICE does not have a node for cylinders (this time I checked, haha), so I'm building my own one. I've already got it working, but the polygon index order is not as nice as that of the factory cylinder in Get->Primitive. I shall try and fix this to end up with a cylinder compound that can completely imitate the factory cylinder.

P.S.: Can I assign my bars and pie segments random colors using ICE? I think I can assign them different materials, but the idea would be one material that references an Attribute_color or something, I think? May not work with geometry though?

Re: Fancy Charts

Posted: 18 May 2011, 20:38
by grahamef
Chris_TC wrote:Can I assign my bars and pie segments random colors using ICE? I think I can assign them different materials, but the idea would be one material that references an Attribute_color or something, I think? May not work with geometry though?
It should work with geometry too.