birds of a feather.....yeah they flock together!!

Well..I seem to be getting back to my senses..spending more time on computer than partying around..Seems a reasonable bargain for the moment at least..

The second unit of my class at Bournemouth Uni has started and since we had to chose the subject for our group project, I decided to go for an implementation of Flocking system in Houdini.

(The main reason being I really wanted to get started with something like Emergent Behavioral systems and considering the fact that we dont really get the time to work on our personal interests along with our projects at the uni..so its probably wiser to improvise the projects themselves to accommodate the effects your most interested in).

What I'm aiming for in this system:

Since this project would be marked I had to keep it within the realms of realism with respect to getting the entire project done within a period of 7 weeks (yeah..including the classes from 9-5, 5 days a week.....phheewww!!)

So I'm aiming to first finish off the 3 basic rules which govern a flocking system:

1) Alignment

2) Cohesion

3) Separation

At the moment I have not kept a hard limit on the points as can be seen from the video, there's a sort of soft limit on the which just helps in giving them more natural movement and gives some time for them to get back into the desired bounding area.

This system doesn't use particles and most of the functions have been built right up from scratch..

Since I would also need them to move in a specific way, I would also want to implement Pathfollowing.

Here's a quick flipbook of preliminary tests of the flocking system:

flocking_prelim_test_v002 from bhavesh pandey on Vimeo.

Not quite spectacular!! I know..I guess I will be able to fix up the issues in some more time..

until then I should be researching!

cubic disintegration..!!

its been ages since i scribbled anything in this part of cyber space..

so just trying to make up for it with a quick and short post....

have been very busy owing to work related issues and deadlines :D

so did a quick test for some effect i have been thinking about..its still in a WIP stage..

the following video is just a prototype of the effect and i will need to make quite a few changes to it before i could put it up here..

cubic disintegration WIP from bhaveshpandey on Vimeo.

will post updates on it later as and when i can steal out some time for it :)

until then..live long and prosper :P

adios..

ShaTTeRED!!..!!

I have been experimenting quite a bit with DOPs for now and yet I had not tasted the joy of Fracturing and shattering objects!

Thats indeed a shame!

Fortunately I dont really have to bear it any longer :D

Here's my first attempt at shattering and fracturing objects in DOPs.

I just wanted to give it some whacky texture so did a stupid graffiti in PS and used it as the texture..

PS: I screwed up big time by not applying the UVs before piping the Geometry to DOPs for sim....so the texture was swimming off the surface of the geometry..(I had also cached out the SIM)

The moral of the story is: apply UVs before deforming/destroying Geometry..

PS(PS:): and if you screwed up just like me....praise the Point/Vertex Sops!!

copy your geometry node (or the file node if you cached out the SIM..) and lock it so that it does not change..apply UVs to it (I used groups so apply different UVs and Material as I wanted)..now lay down a point/vertex SOP (if you have UVs on points then Point SOP...if they are on the Vertices then a Vertex SOP) use it to transfer the UVS from the locked (non moving/deforming) geometry to the Simulated one..

PS[PS(PS:)] : I have also started some experimentation with VEX and VOPs and HOT!! (Houdini Ocean Toolkit)..I must say I have been fracturing my Brain (or whatever is left of it) and I have been doing ok and sometimes good.

Speaking of it..I guess I could express my performance as:

fit01(rand($PROJECT), 0.75, 0.85).....LOL

see ya!

ODE Solver..and some fun! (ode to ODE Solver!)

this is flipbooked sequence of a Rigid Body Simulation with in Houdini using the ODE Solver..

Actually this is more of a Hybrid..using POPs, VOP POPs, SOPs, and DOPs in Houdini..

There were 2 DOP simulations used for different purposes..

The Particles were also Advected to get a specific movement.

Main intention behind this was simply my NEED to work with the ODE Solver. ODE is mainly used for Dynamics in gaming and cant work with complex geometry..So I made up a Truck (sort of :P ) using simple primitives and used that for the Dynamics..

Though ODE Solvers are much faster than Houdini's RBDs, there's a lot of difference between the accuracy and the ability to handle Complex Geometry within a simulation.

SESI implementing ODE in Houdini is awesome! Now we have a choice in case we want just a Pre-Vis or if we are working with simple Geometry types.

The simulation for DOPs took no more than 4-5 seconds per frame..(sometimes lower than this)

POPs and VOP POPs was almost realtime..

Specs:

500 different RBDs simulated together.

DOPs Sim time: 4-5 secs per frame. (max..sometimes lower than this)

which is amazingly fast considering my system configs:

2GB RAM,

intel core 2duo, 2.1GHz, 32 bit, WinXP

The Biblical Flood..of CHOCOLATE :D (fluid simulation)

hhmm..things moving pretty good and fast this once..(is it because my college is over??..hmm*thinking* hehehe)

orrighty..so here's the Fluid Simulation I had posted last time....just few changes though

I made it lot more Viscous..I wanted to give different look kinda like a chocolate..

I am facing some issues though..as is always the case..things tend to get nasty with me....good thing is..i'm nastier than them hahaha

Ok..lets move on..

I have some Self Shadowing artifacts as you can see in the picture. Issue is if I increase the bias and raytracing intersection distance..I'm losing a lot of shadow detail..

Wanted to see both the pics (i.e. with and without Motion Blur) just for fun of it..

I have thought of some camera movements and stuff but nothing specific as yet.

PS: well thats enough about 'the Biblical Flood of Chocolate' :D

The wetmap implementation is still not complete..but its almost there..(trust me guys I know it..I have done it before :P )

(yeah i know..still not there with the ART of cracking FUnnY jOkES )

flood in the bathtub??

i'm getting terribly restless..reason??

one of the most frustrating thing for me is no longer there to eat my head off.

Since I had worked on Realflow (which I really liked), I could not really get my grasp on the particle fluids in Houdini.

I cant really blame Houdini for this....its all my misunderstanding. I was trying to work on Houdini the way I used to in Realflow. Having said that I must say, Houdini and Realflow are very much alike if some of the things are cleared when you switch. In a way Houdini gives far more control to the user as compared to Realflow.

I'm not taking anything away from Realflow because I simply cant. Its made for fluids and dynamics....I do also feel its faster than the fluids in Houdini.

I use Houdini fluids for the simple reason: MORE CONTROL.

Realflow did not have a official Houdini export until now (there's a beta version Realflow plug-in for the same..for more details on this please cheack Odforce.)

And since I have been working on Houdini primarily for everythin, I cant really use RF fluids.

Also there's a lot of control which if leveraged properly, can get you amazing results.

Anyways, I used to be really irritated because of lousy and stupid looking meshing of the Particle Fluids....which I again confess was my lack of understanding.

Finally while working on this personal project the solution dawns upon me.

Its got to do with the Particle Seperation.

If you have a high seperation (which I used to keep high to get better speed) the partcles will be farther away from each other and thus when meshed, the mesh turns out to be entirely stupid. (come on I could draw up a better mesh on paper than THAT).

This once, I kept the separation lower, keeping sure it not unnecessarily slowing my system (a value lower than 0.1 but higher than 0.01 usually gives good performance/quality ratio) I tried to get the desired look changing parameters like Bounce, Friction etc.

Once I got something similar to what I wanted, then I would try to up the resolution.

Well to be honest, I also cheated a bit as far as resolution of the sim is concerned.

Ok, its still in a Work In Progress image so I have got a screen capture and a quick test render done (which is nothing fancy: no motion blur..no texture etc).

almost done with the wetmaps implementation. (Houdini doesnot generate wetmaps straight out of the box..but to learn how it could be done is even more fascinating!)

Will update later :)

PS: please ignore the title....it's another side effect of my self imposed isolation haha :D