Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Sidetracked from boids for a while

Sorry for the lack of updates, but I've been sidetracked a bit from coding boids into exploring possibilities of node particles. Yes, you heard it right :) I know I've said before that that would require a massive rewrite of the current code, but on a closer look I'm not yet sure if that's the case so at least I'm venturing into the unknown for a little while to see what things would be possible without too much trouble.

The main reason for this is that I added some ways of combining boid rules in a more complicated way and started realizing that the ui could get very complicated in complex rule systems. One way to help the situation would be to have the boid rules as nodes, but then again why go through the trouble of nodalizing a part of the particles without going the whole way. Let's see what happens and you can be sure I'll post something the minute I get anything worth showing :)

12 comments:

  1. Jahka !!!! It could be the best thing ever to turn Blender into a "Particle Flow like". I heard that Ton said we can imagine to used nodes for every operation in blender, after the release of Blender 2.5. Perhaps for Blender 2.5.1 or 2.5.2. If this kind of features are released, Blender could become powerfull as Houdini !!!

    Thanks again for your wonderfull work !!! On my website coyhot.com, you can go to the gallery section and see all animations i've done using your great particle system !!! Subsections "Finished", "Press" and "Researches" now have a new "Flash player" to see animations without any external player.

    Thanks man !!!!!!

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  2. This is great news Jahka!

    I really hope you can make this happen!

    On a sidenote, are we going to see different physics options like fire, fluid, smoke or even an option for plugins in the future?

    Thanks for doing this!

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  3. *does the happy dance*

    That is awesome, hopefully,
    the findings will be positive in nature. :)

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  4. Yay! Sounds very interesting. Make sure to take your time and don't rush so that nodes,(if thats the way you decide to go) is implemented in the best way ;) I've seen a couple of ugly implementations in other apps (not all nodebased paricle system is as good as Houndini's =)

    Thanks!

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  5. Awesome plan. Hope it works out.

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  6. joins the happy dance... Jahka I love what you have done to the particles so far looking forward to what is coming!

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  7. Would be nice if this nodes would not only work for particles, but forr other physics too (like particle water, particle collisions, smoke).

    If you get the time - take a look at how Houdini nodes physics work (they have a free edition for download!). That's how i think blender could work too and it wouldn't be too hard, it's just you have to plan it at beginning.

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  8. I'm happy about this. As long as it doesn't prevent the listed goals from happening. I do think a node based approach will help with the visual planning of a particle system. Will be interesting to see how you go about creating it and what will be an individual node and what won't.

    I will say I'd really like to see texture nodes included within the particle node setup. As well as materials. But I don't know how likely that is in the scope of your own project.

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  9. If you get this working, I think I have to dig a hole to ground so I can bow a little more to your direction.

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  10. particle nodes in blender would be AWESOME!! I hope this would make it into an eventual release of blender, I prefer a nodal workflow in most all aspects of 3D/compositing. Thanks Jahka for all your hard work.

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  11. yeah! nodes for everything :D !!

    keep it up!

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