Comments on: PY4D Boids

By: flashgordon

flashgordon — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:31:56 +0000

anytime

By: Will MacNeil

Will MacNeil — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:30:54 +0000

Ooops. It’s fine now. The script didn’t like the text I copied in.

Thanks!

By: Will MacNeil

Will MacNeil — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:25:09 +0000

Sorry, I’m getting an error message when I copy the text into line 132. The error links to line 42. Just let me know if I’m disturbing you!

By: Will MacNeil

Will MacNeil — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:07:33 +0000

Beautiful! Thanks. I know very little about coding, so I may come back with some questions.

This project I’m doing is part of a large multi-studio animated film. I can’t tell you much more about it now, but I look forward to sharing it with you later.

Cheers,

By: flashgordon

flashgordon — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:03:31 +0000

Yes exactly,

there is a global vector “target” that represents the virtual target of the swarm.
It gets bounced around randomly within a box – see the method “movetarget”.

You will find it again at the “rule4″ method which makes the boids follow.

I would suggest to comment out the call to “set_target()” at line 69 and to replace the line 137 within “rule4″ like this:

return (op[ID_USERDATA, 1].get_pos() – bpos[c]) / 100

This should allow you to control the boids movement by moving the null “Target”
(it´s linked to the PY4D Tag via the userdata field 1).

By: Will MacNeil

Will MacNeil — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:51:41 +0000

Thanks Flash!

Is there a way to control the target movement? It seems to be controlled by the script, yes?

Cheers,

By: flashgordon

flashgordon — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:29:13 +0000

Hi Will,

if the boids are in any way helpful for your project than please go ahead and feel free to use them.
The whole purpose of that script was to take PY4D for a spin and to encourage others to do the same

The scenefile is already prepared to make it easy to attach any object like your planes.

Btw: just watched your real – nice!

Cheers!

By: Will MacNeil

Will MacNeil — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:38:49 +0000

Hi, I was wondering if there’s a way to incorporate PY4D Boids into a project I’m doing. I need to control several simple planes in a similar way.

I realise the Py4D is in Beta and that Boids is not currently a commercial product, but at the same time, my project is for a charity film and I’m willing to take a few risks.

Great job on this, by the way.

Cheers,

Will

By: flashgordon

flashgordon — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:55:32 +0000

Hi Jay,

I am not sure if other CG suites bring a “decent” solution to this with them, but I do know that there is a marked for 3rd party plugins dealing with dynamic destruction and fragmentation of objects.

The common approach to fragmentation is to cut polys based on a voronoi diagram.
So it´s not that hard – the difficult part is to make it performant.

As for C4D, there is a plugin called “Lehman” in the making, that generates voronoi fragments.

Since Cinema4D R11.5, Mograph2 implements the Bullet engine – so the ridgid body physics involved in blasting an object should be easy to simulate.

By: Jay

Jay — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:15:22 +0000

I dont know if you will see this but It seem you have plugged into python, I do not know why but cinema still does not have a a decent way to break a object apart based on fractal. It hard for me to explain the simplest method have a look here http://www.mirvadim.com/. This is rayfire. Basically it uses a fractal on a polygon, multiplys and random places it withing a volume( this is the cutter ) this is the cutter, the result are realistic fracture pieces that are made children of dynamics systems Maby you can make something like this for Cinema, after 10 years they still have not done this is it that hard? RayfireTool explains the process, it seems simple enough.