Sunday, 25 July 2010

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.
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12 comments:

  1. Burg5 August 2010 at 11:16

    Hi Julian! How do you go about using this? Where do you plug the compound into etc?

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Steffen9 August 2010 at 10:38

    Awesome! Thank you very much! :)

    One tiny request though: could your node be "modded" to also fill volumes with the dart throwing algorithm?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Unknown10 August 2010 at 08:00

    Thanks for sharing it Julian. Very nice addon, saved me a lot on previous works.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Unknown28 January 2011 at 01:05

    Thank you very much for making this add-on.

    Just a quick question...how do I use the size output to drive and randomize my particle size? I get a structure mismatch error.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous12 March 2012 at 03:13

    Thanks,
    Well Done!
    Szabolcs

    ReplyDelete
  6. olivier jeannel26 March 2013 at 13:40

    Thank's a lot Mr Julian ! I used Dart Throw for a quick project and it worked superbly ! Great great stuff, thank you :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous2 May 2013 at 03:16

    Strange error. I use no maps. I put the compound in the modeling stack.

    Emit from position (points > position) > IceTree Node 1.
    Select in array ( self.id > index & sizes > array) > set point size > IceTree Node 2.

    All works.

    Change timeline to be from 3 to 100 so no recomputing. Press play and the positions of the points change over time. Why? Bug?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Julian Johnson3 May 2013 at 07:51

    Hi Anonymous,

    I'll take a look and let you know if I can track down the problem.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Julian Johnson18 May 2013 at 23:56

    Anonymous,

    Can you send me the scene or put in online somewhere I can access it? I've tried to reproduce in 2013SP1 but I can't get point positions to change over time...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous13 June 2013 at 12:36

      Ok excellent, as if that's the case, and I certain trust your efforts, maybe it was because I was using an older version. Sorry for the delay in replying.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous13 June 2013 at 12:38

      PS oh would i love to see this use all the cpu's. :)

      Delete
  10. Anonymous12 June 2013 at 22:23

    Hi julian,
    awesome tool.
    I'm hoping you could advise me on how to use it with Instance geometry.

    As always, I had a play around and thought I had it completely sussed. Now a job has turned up and I can't get it to work with instances. Whenever I add instance geometry the instances interpenetrate.
    I've tried using the Instance Geometry node and plugging it into the Add Point node and tried the Instance shape node plugged into the Init Particle Data node, but with no success.
    Not sure what I'm doing wrong.

    Thanks again for making this available,
    Steve

    ReplyDelete

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