Friday, February 26, 2010

No more bugs please!

Sorry again for the lack of updates recently, I have a boid basics tutorial waiting to be recorded, but unluckily I'm still too busy to really get into it.

But that's not the reason for this post, because now I've totally had it! Yesterday I finally had a tiny bit of time to check on the state of particle bugs in the tracker and what do you know I start fixing them one by one and notice that it's really nice to do some proper particles coding again. Then along comes today and I get this terrible urge to actually code some features! "It's been too long since I've been out having fun!" cries my particle brain. So here we are with some small updates to hair dynamics and I didn't get a single thing done from the actual work I was supposed to do today!

So I'm asking you guys, no more particle bug reports unless you really want me to code some more features! The withdrawal symptoms are getting stronger and every day it gets harder being away from particles ;)

28 comments:

  1. Haa. awesome to see u back in business :)... when r u planning to commit rauls particles fluids patch? :D:D . Cant wait to see your boids tuts too ;) . Thanks again for the awesome work u have done for blender ;) \m/ .

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jahka, how can i contact you privately, for a feature request. Trying to use blender in feature film production and missing a little feature.

    thanks
    wayne

    ReplyDelete
  3. Shrinidhi Rao: I'll try to start looking over Raul's patch properly in a week or so, when I should have some more time for Blender again.

    wayne berry: You can get my email for example from the commit message (link in the post) or PM me at blenderartists.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Awesome work, man! Thanks so much for these amazing tools.

    You mentioned 'proper hair-object collisions' ... is that already in now? or still to come?

    btw: any idea when texture-controlled emission of (hair) particles will be back? With that I could pick up where I left off in 2.49:
    http://blenderartists.org/forum/showpost.php?p=1486440&postcount=8

    ReplyDelete
  5. saw you recent bug fixes and the cool new hair dynamics additions, THANK YOU!!! really wanted interactions for hair, and now it looks like you've added them :-)

    ReplyDelete
  6. lol! You're a code-a-holic! This makes me feel a little bad about what I'm going to ask you^^

    Do you see any possibility to implement a second cache type, which doesn't cache unborn and dead particles? You should still be able to choose the common cache style, because of the explode modifier and similar stuff. But when you don't need it, it can consume an awfully high amount of redundand memory. Imagine for example a particle system with 1.000.000 particles over 1.000 frames, but with only a life time of 50 frames. (I've just had a similar situation)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Eric: hair-object collisions are not yet supported, but the durian team want's something like that so let's see what they come up with :)

    Daniel: Everything you described is already in my plans (the beginnings are already commented out in the cache code) and it will fit in nicely without a need for a second cache type. I'll need this as well for the "emission frequency" feature, so this is at the very top of my todo-list. Hopefully in a couple of weeks I'll have time to start development full speed again.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Thanks for the info jahka ... lookin' forward to whatever's coming down the pipeline.

    Anything on texture-controlled emission of (hair) particles?

    ReplyDelete
  9. Eric: Textures are on my todo-list, but I want to re-implement things properly for 2.5 so I can't make any promises when I'll get to it.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Cool, thanks for the response. I'll just work around it for now, and try to come to grips with all of the other goodies you've given us. :)

    Thanks again, and keep up the good work!

    ReplyDelete
  11. thanks Jahka!

    Ok, no more bugs report :D

    ReplyDelete
  12. At some point I remember you started to explore the possibility of a node based workflow. Is this something still in your plans ?

    ReplyDelete
  13. Any updates to anything? Reactor particles are very missed!

    ReplyDelete
  14. Brian: Well, I'm working with Lukas (phonybone) on refactoring some of the core stuff for particles (these changes are needed before reactor particles can be reimplemented for example). But other than that I'm really just too busy with work currently to spend any quality time with Blender except for some crucial bug fixing. However I have a lot of ideas about new features and how to make old things better, so lucy for you I'll probably be unemployed quite soon and you can expect things to heat up again with particle development :)

    ReplyDelete
  15. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  16. ahka: Just made a donation. Sorry to hear about your future unemployment.

    My inquiry was only because I miss them from 2.49.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Brian: Thank you very much! But it's nothing to be sorry about as it's nothing new. New teachers usually are unemployed during the summer break. I'm hoping to find some programming/computer work though. And I know.. I miss them too, but I can promise that they will be back better than ever when they're ready!

    ReplyDelete
  18. No problem! I look forward to the return, and improvements, of reactor particles!

    ReplyDelete
  19. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Any updates? :) I'll send another donation for another blog post! :)

    ReplyDelete
  21. Jahka, you are doing a great job. Thanks to your efforts. I have a question regarding the particle system in blender. It is possible in the blender particle system to emit particles from a center of object in both direction instead of Vert or Faces or Volume. Also, It is possible to affect the path of the particle? I agree I can have Wind and other things in the sides of the particle path, but it could be nice if we have a random or deviated path for the particle?
    Just curious to know.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Hyvä Janne! Jätkä on pistäny koko blenderin taas ihan uudelle levelille noiden partikkelien avulla. Melkein vois halata, mut en tiiä sit kuiteskaan. Sunlaisia tarvitaan! :D

    ReplyDelete
  23. Incredible work your doing Jahka.Im very excited over the hair particles and what you've achieved in blender so far.I wonder if youve come across Hair farm and the methods that are used to produce hair styles with extrusions and modelling and if this is something youve thought about?

    ReplyDelete
  24. iblenderppc: A bit of a late answer, but what you describe isn't currently possible. I have many ideas on how to extend the particle emission options in the future, and I'll keep the idea in mind for that time.

    tinsley.clan: Very interesting, I hadn't seen hair farm before. Could be an interesting feature to investigate, but the pending patent application on the technology kind of makes me wonder.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Yes the patent is a curious one as ive seen hair generators from polys before.
    The possibility of maybe just visualising the bordering parting splines as generated polygon blocks as an overlapping transparent coloured cage whilst editing the hair, this would help in the design of the hair style, as the editing of the hair is already very flexible and strong. and maybe having the inner emitting splines optionally interpolated to the edited parting splines. allowing more basic combing to the parting splines. Im sorry if this sounds like the ramblings of a mad man, but i bow and dribble at the presence of such talent.

    ReplyDelete
  26. I agree, and don't really know what they could possibly patent from that, but will have to follow how that develops. Anyways after some thought I think a significant amount of the functionality is already present in keyed particles, so I'm kind of itching to see if I could get something working. But will have to see :)

    ReplyDelete
  27. Hi Jahka, Thank you for you much needed improvements to the Particle System (Branch).

    However, a few of us users linger in the blenderartists forum with concerns to PAttr time and Particle Reactor.

    Here's my post as an example to what I am talking about:
    http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php/178149-Blender-2.5-Missing-Broken-functionality-from-2.4x?p=1575087&highlight=pattr#post1575087

    Thank and keep up the good work!

    Whimsy Collective

    P.S. If possible, could we post comments with name and url. Thanks again.

    ReplyDelete