Lack of updates

Hi guys,

as you may have noticed I haven't posted any new stuff recently. The main reason for this is that I'm trying to get my Master's thesis ready (theoretical physics) hopefully before the end of this year, and working on it leaves very little time for fun stuff such as coding particles. Also the biggest thing on my current particles todo-list is probably to bring back reactor particles much better than they were in Blender 2.4x and judging from the initial looks this will be somewhat more difficult that I had thought. It will require a few relatively big changes to the particles code internals, and changes of this magnitude are just not possible with the coding time of max few hours a day. However when I do have the time for this the end result will in addition to much nicer reactor particles for example allow for proper (animateable) emission frequency instead of the not so versatile particles amount parameter.

Anyways just wanted to let everybody know I haven't disappeared anywhere, just busy with my studies.

Counting and curving

The beginning of the video is for CoyHot and the second part for Nicholas8681, but I guess you other guys can watch too :)

Some more info in the commit message.

Refreshed force fields

Yay! After a long silence I have something new for you guys again!

Unified effector functionality for particles, cloth and softbody

• Unified scene wide gravity (currently in scene buttons) instead of each simulation having it's own gravity.
• Weight parameters for all effectors and an effector group setting.
• Every effector can use noise.
• Most effectors have "shapes" point, plane, surface, every point.
  • "Point" is most like the old effectors and uses the effector location as the effector point.
  • "Plane" uses the closest point on effectors local xy-plane as the effector point.
  • "Surface" uses the closest point on an effector object's surface as the effector point.
  • "Every Point" uses every point in a mesh effector object as an effector point.
  • The falloff is calculated from this point, so for example with "surface" shape and "use only negative z axis" it's possible to apply force only "inside" the effector object.
• Spherical effector is now renamed as "force" as it's no longer just spherical.
• New effector parameter "flow", which makes the effector act as surrounding air velocity, so the resulting force is proportional to the velocity difference of the point and "air velocity". For example a wind field with flow=1.0 results in proper non-accelerating wind.
• New effector fields "turbulence", which creates nice random flow paths, and "drag", which slows the points down.
• Much improved vortex field.
• Effectors can now effect particle rotation as well as location.
• Use full, or only positive/negative z-axis to apply force (note. the z-axis is the surface normal in the case of effector shape "surface")
• New "force field" submenu in add menu, which adds an empty with the chosen effector (curve object for corve guides).
• Other dynamics should be quite easy to add to the effector system too if wanted.
• "Unified" doesn't mean that force fields give the exact same results for particles, softbody & cloth, since their final effect depends on many external factors, like for example the surface area of the effected faces.

Known issues

• Curve guides don't yet have all ui buttons in place, but they should work none the less.
• Hair dynamics don't yet respect force fields.

I know it's quite a lot of new functionality, but it should mostly work just like old force fields, just better and more predictably :). In the future I'll also try to make some tutorial videos about the more interesting ways of using the new force field options.

Hair dynamics

Hair particle dynamics are now done with the cloth simulation!

• An added hair specific feature of internal friction makes hair act much more realistically.
• As a result of the earlier point cache update the hair dynamics can now be edited in particle mode after baking just like particle, cloth and soft body bakes.

All this is still very early code and for example collisions with other objects are not implemented yet, but all in all it's light years more stable and better than the old soft body based dynamics!

Some more details in the commit message.

When everything falls into place

Yes it's teaser time again! No sound, just particles & cloth simulation :)

Disconnect & connect

Some more details at the commit message.

Point cache editing

Some more info in the commit message.