Load pictures in runtime from folder

[Superpositivo]

Hi, friends!

- Situation:
about 1000 photos are emitted as particles. All these photo must be different, so not repeated, and they are floating in the screen (well, I don't stay here to tell about the animation, these details are not important).
Normally, with much less pictuers, I'd put the pictures already in the scene and then use them as instances to be emitted.
But they are 1000!

- Request:
Is it possibile, in Softimage, Ice, or with whatever script, to load pictures from a folder, without the need to have them on the scene?
Pratically the best would be that every emitted particle should take a photo from a specific folder and so on for every particle.

I'm afraid it cannot do it, but, well...maybe?....

[Bullit]

I think a request like that already appeared here.

[FXDude]

Yes it did, along with a setup scene I beleive.

Let me try and find it..

[FXDude]

Here:
www.si-community.com • View topic - ICE Task

It was for an image gallery, & links are on the second page

Hope it helps!


(Edit: sorry, orig link is on the first page, and links to modified versions and movie clip is on the second)

[Superpositivo]

First of all, THANKS dudes, Bullit and FXDude!!!

I remembered that gallery, actually I downloaded it and tried to do something, but I have to admit that it's more complex than my need (and than what I can understand about). But that example of gallery have ONE thing that I need and that I don't know how to do it.

I saw that all the pictures are loaded as a sequence on an grid that is instantiated.

I can emit particles based on the picture number in the sequence, but the emission would be related on the timeline, like Frame 1 > Pic 1, Frame 2 Pic 2 etc.
It means that to emit the 1000th photo I need to arrive at the 1000th frame. And I cannot do that.

The thing I don't know how to do is how to emit a certain number of particles on frame 1 (or 2), and assign to each one a picture from the sequence. It means that if I emit 10 particles, they will have pictures from 1 to 10.
I see in the gallery file it does it. But I cannot figure it out how.

So maybe some of you have a clue about it?

[FXDude]

I remembered that gallery, actually I downloaded it and tried to do something, but I have to admit that it's more complex than my need

By the sound of it, this seems more like what you're looking for no? :

http://xsisupport.com/2010/02/21/sprite ... particles/

[rray]

By the sound of it, this seems more like what you're looking for no? :

http://xsisupport.com/2010/02/21/sprite ... particles/

Here's a scene that uses this "time source" input method.
"time source" is a little odd, it expects an attribute input that's somehow related to the sequence number, and also related to the fps settings, couldn't quite figure it out but got something that works.
Also renders only with mental ray, so I don't know how useful it is.
Viewport shouldn't be set to textured either because this is very slow (1 fps here for 100 images)

[Superpositivo]

Thanks a lot!
@FxDude It was really helpful! I didn't do it exactly as the example from Stephen. I made it simple (more because I don't know why, but I wasn't able to create a custom attribute, then with the RRay example it was clear why...), anyway, it worked.

@RRay, I saw the scene and pratically is the same as the one from Stephen, but that let me undestand something more about it and it's good for the generation of the particles. Interesting. Thanks a lot! Actually for only 100 images is slow, but I think it's ICE that slow. My scene is a little faster with 100 images, but slow, anyway.

I was looking for a way to add a unique picture to each particle at the first frame without any repetition. So now I think this is done.

Thanks a lot to everybody!!!

Here it is my Render Tree and Ice (images and scene are not the real work).

[FXDude]

Sorry missed your reply! cool then! and that (all of this) is actually pretty good knowledgebase material! Thanks!