Dart Throwing with Weight Maps

3rd July 2013: Please note: the latest, updated,  version of Dart Throw is here.

I've just finished a new version of Dart Throwing with weight map control for spacing (spacing maps) and point deletion (erase maps). It uses it's own internal scheme for computing the barycentric weights from weight map values at vertices. Spacing maps allow you to modulate the density of the points using the weight map as an interpolant between the spacing radius and max spacing radius. Erase maps have a threshold parameter which lets you control at what point between 0 and 1 on the weight map the point should be deleted.

There's also a new 'Iteration Abort' parameter which specifies the number of tries (as a normalised percentage of the total iterations) the plugin should make before it aborts. This is for scenarios where you set a huge number of iterations but the number of successful darts becomes very low i.e. if you set 1,000,000 iterations and you only get an additional 1 dart added in the last 500,000 'tries' then you can see that aborting after 500,000 might be handy. The message window gets logged with the maximum number of iterations for a single try as a reference.

Changes in the way multiphase/element generator plugins work in the SDK mean that this version is only available for the very latest version of Autodesk Softimage - 2011 SP1. The Addon has been compiled for both 32 and 64bit Windows.

Download Dart Throw v002 Addon

A Vimeo clip is here.

Context Switching Using Set Nodes and Filter

In the roll object compound below I use the Set nodes to move between point context and object context. Combined with filter, it's a powerful way to access an individual component in a specific context and make it available to all other components in that context.

On the list here (and on several occasions before), Ciaran Moloney has suggested a technique for using Set nodes, Filter and the Repeat node for gathering data in one context and turning it into an object context array. It's a great technique and one which deserves a closer look.

Whenever you use a specific context node e.g. point, node, polygon in the branch of an ICE Tree its context takes precedence over any object context nodes in the same branch. As soon as you try and set any data in that branch it will always be in the more granular context. Using the Get Set xx nodes, however, acts as a switch to the context of the branch and turns it back into object context. Put simply if you start off in 'polygon position' context you can finish the branch with a Get xx in Set node which provides you with a single piece of object context data e.g. maximum in set.

Ciaran's trick involves using this switching ability to continually iterate over each point, polygon or node and isolate a single item each time - pushing that item onto an object context array.

In the tree above I construct an object context array of all the node positions. You can see that the tree starts in node context but then each node has a repeat loop iterating over itself matching it's own element index with the list of all node element indexes. When it finds a match the output is a single node still in node context. Pumping this into Get Maximum in Set - a filtered set of one - simply switches the output to object context and the node position gets pushed onto an object context array.

The downside is obviously iteration time as each node has to iterate NbNodes times over itself and with large numbers of nodes, polygons etc. this could be slow. However, it seems like the only surefire way to construct robust object context arrays of node positions, polygon positions etc.

Even Spacing on Curve/Normalised U on Curve

Following on from a post by Brad Gabe on the mailing list it looked like the existing normalised u compounds on The Area didn't seem to take an array of u values as an input so I decided to revisit Even Spacing on Curve and reformulate so that the user could input an array of (or a single) normalised U value. In the process, I fixed some bugs and hopefully cleaned up the trees a bit. The resulting two compounds are here:

Even Spaced Curve Positions 2.0

Normalised U To Curve Position 2.0

For even spacing points on a curve, Helge's Strand Tools provide a much better solution. I don't think there's another compound that accepts an array of normalised U values so the second compound may be useful.

Let me know if you find any errors.