emTopolizer2: a shy release... for now.

[Mootzoid]

Howdy people!

Prologue:
To be honest, I did not know if I should post or not post the release of emTopolizer2. Why? Well, because I haven't made a release video yet, because the demo scenes are lame and hardly reflect what the new emTopolizer2 version is capable of, because the documentation is lean, because there are no video tutorials available yet, etc.

Body:
But then, after thinking it through, I just thought "Oh, what the hell!".
I am therefore happy to announce that there is a new version of emTopolizer available.
emTopolizer2 version 2.02



Here are some of the new features:

• new operator "Get Topo from Particles".
• new operator "Get Topo from Strands".
• new preset "Roads".
• new operator "Clean".
• new operator "Log current State".
• new operator "Swap UVW Components" (+ new internal op "Swap Components").
• the operators "Get Topo from Object/Particles/Strands" now support groups.
• some fixes and enhancement regarding the Polygonizer.
• the Polygonizer preset has been revised, surplus it is now possible to polygonize surfaces as well as volumes with the help of emTools's newest "Get Position Set" compound.

My personal favorites are the first two new features. They may seem a bit boring at first glance, but they belong to that kind of feature that can come in very handy during production if, for example, one needs to export point clouds (particles or strands) to other 3D applications or to simply go beyond the standard what-can-be-done-with-particles features, e.g. one could convert strands and particles into a polygon mesh to be able to apply some displacement and other nice things (note: the meshes that are created based on the particles/strands have UVs, vertex colors, motion vectors and normals).

Epilogue:
I am afraid that this was it for this announcement. No video, no pictures (a part the one above), no video tutorials, no mega-shiny new things... just some new features and tools to hopefully ease one's daily 3D production life a little.

Post-Epilogue
Please note that there will be a release video. The plan is to build all the scenes and then to go visit my friends at Polynoid who - coincidence! - have a very nice render farm. He, he, call me "Opportunistoid". Seriously, the release video is really important, because emTopolizer is kind of abstract and it might not be easy to see what its potential is.

Stay tuned!

Best,
Eric

PS: some of my beta testers reported that the "Topo from Particles/Strands" gets pretty slow with many particles/strands. That is something I am going to improve soon.

[Pooby]

Fantastic. Thanks Eric. I can't wait to try it out.
Does the particle topologiser accept instanced geom?

[Mootzoid]

Yes, instance geo is supported, but it currently has the following limitations:
- instance animation is not yet supported.
- children of the instance are ignored.

Those things will be implemented some time in the near future though.