hi,

Hopefully this will work: I've never tried publishing a compiled version, so I'm not sure whether or not anyone else will be able to run this!

But anyway: I've been playing with particle deflection and if anyone's interested, here's a tuhopuu with the current code:

http://reblended.com/www/leon/thp_pdef.zip

You will need to unzip into a folder containing all the usual files, so make a copy of your tuhopuu folder, then overwrite the .exe with the file in the zip. If you're on another platform and can compile and patch yourself, there's a patch file here.

I've added another panel "Particle interaction" to the edit buttons for meshes, which can be seen when you are in object mode. It has two buttons: an on/off for particle deflection, and a slider for "surface damping" which controls how high particles bounce when they hit the surface (around 0.5 - 0.6 gives nice results depending on the angle the particle hits).

Any particles which hit the mesh should be deflected: but there's plenty still to do, so things don't work perfectly by any means! In particular....

- It really only works well for large squarish planes so far, and even then particles sometimes leak through. Animated surfaces will not work yet...

- Particles leak especially badly at joins between objects / faces....

- The surface normal is important: if particles don't deflect as expected, try flipping the normals of the face.

- You need to set the "particle keys" as high as possible (32) to get good results (and keep the particle life as low as possible)

- If you move the deflector or change the surface damping, you will need to hit "recalc all" in the particle effect.

- Try something simple first - like particles falling on a large plane. Experimentation is needed to get things working nicely!!!

Cheers

Leon

Interesting! It did seem quite buggy though, and as you say particles often fall through surfaces. They also often behave odly. I did a test where the particles started to get stuck scrubbing strangely up and down a surface untill they die. But it certinately is an interesting first try with this feature that has been requested again and again.

About the Particle Interaction panel: It takes up valuable Editbuttons space, and its size doesn't fit with other panels. There is so little in it, too.
I was thinking about other places to put it when it struck me it would be very logical if it were under Effects>>Particles. There could be a dropdown to flip between the following particles effects: Emitter and Deflector. In my oppinion that would seem more logical to the user, and also be cleverer spacewise.

-William
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Website: http://www.shadeless.dk

Hi monkeyboi,

Thanks for taking a look! Can you post your test blend (the one with the particles scrubbing up and down the surface) somewhere?

I will spend some time this weekend on it, and strange problems like that sometimes make the bugs a little clearer.

I was thinking about the effects panel, but for now I'll leave it where it is - my idea was that in the future you'd have other settings as well, possibly attraction / repulsion etc.

Cheers

Leon

This is awsome!!!
A huge step foward for the blender animators out there!
I am going to look closely each of your post

Keep up the good work !!!!

Willy wrote:

hi, It's the first time I post here, I've just tried your tuhopuu, for the "Particules Interaction"; it works good I rendered a little animation that you can see at : http://www.zoo-logique.org/3D.Blender/animations/bounding_balls_[DivX].avi However, your tuhopuu's size is 6.62Mo against 4.11Mo for the 2.32. Also, I find this good because it's enough hard working with the particules I hope this message will appears like I want and the little video will please you a little bit, leon Friendly Willy

indeed very cool!!!

i will try to post some sample file's and bugs
here @

http://www.dotblend.com/blenderbugs.htm

Hi WOW works great for me, simple to get going as well, Well done, this really should get into the BF builds, great work mate.


Ken

Dotblend: he said it will not work for animated faces yet. (looking at your sample 'n bugs page)

First of all,it is nice to see that there is developement under the particle system to gain more realism. I like what I see.

Right, I gave couple test spinns to your deflector system, and it indeeds seems to work, but what I gathered it works like a baseball bat, which hits the particles back to the direction they came from, am I correct?

What I mean is in example smoke or fire would try to seek way around the obstacle and not be stroken back, so I gather I am asking are you developing particles to work like that?

But nice work, I hope to see updates on this projects.
_________________
At elYsiun I am known as Hippie

thanks for all the testing!

Dotblend - like Eric says, animated deflectors aren't supported yet (although you can animate the particle source). BTW, I had a look at the scene you made, and you will get much better results with the "keys" set to 32 rather than 8 as you have.

tmt - yes, that would be nice to have. I'm not sure of the maths for doing it though, but I'll have a think....

cheers

leon

Great work Leon, its works a treat, the particle leakage is very minimal you just had to keep an eye on
the the particle normals speed. Here's som duplivert cubes flowing nicely



/nozzy

Great stuff! Keep up the good work:)