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3 Dimensional Chat / Super Spray and UDeflector in MAX4

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GavinO
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Posted: 23rd Dec 2002 20:26
In MAX4, I set up a Super Spray pointing at a QuadPatch that has been deformed with Noise and Patch Edit. I then add a UDeflector and pick the QuadPatch as the object. The Super Spray is bound to the space warp. This works fine, unless I set the bounce to 0 (Iwant the particles to wash over the surface) THe particles go right through the surface, only slightly deflected by the surface. There is no Quality property to the UDeflector like there is with normal Deflector. How do I get the particles to not go through the surface? I've tried insane mesh densities as well. The problem is more pronounced when I add in gravity. THe final effect is to have a body of water wash over a surface, then fall into a pit in the surface with flames coming out of it. Any help with getting the particles to not penetrate the surface would be greatly appreicated.
QuothTheRaven
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Posted: 23rd Dec 2002 21:03
To make the particles bounce off a deflector all you need to do is make a deflector under the create panel and bind it to the particle system. Dont try to use anything as a deflector except the deflector itself, I think
GavinO
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Posted: 24th Dec 2002 20:01
Thats what I'm doing. A particle effect space-warp bound to a UDeflector. A UDeflector requires an object to work, and I pick my quadpatch with some modifiers on it. When I add gravity, I try both bind orders, as it sometimes has an effect (I did read the help files!)

GavinO
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Posted: 24th Dec 2002 20:33
Okay, I did a bit more testing, and found that the collision is abysmal with concave surfaces. This is irritating as there is no collision mode control like for a Reactor object. Does anyone know of a way to make collision with concave surfaces work?

Shadow Robert
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Posted: 24th Dec 2002 22:57
use Maya
hehee ... buht i suppose if thats not an option, then you have to make deflection modifiers PER face really for complete control, possibly make an array set of them.
The particle systems within max are very jittery unless you use the weighted collision, even then you have to make sure the particle modifier is set on a soft selection collision and setup soft collision envelope areas

takes more processing power but thats about the only ways i know how right now ... i'll see about doin' an ickle test later and trying to get them to work right and explain exactly how. Cause it is something i'd preferablly do for something i'm working on for gases and such.

(^_^)

Anata aru kowagaru no watashi!
GavinO
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Posted: 27th Dec 2002 16:56
Yeah, stock dynamics in Maya rock, I know. Too bad I only have Max and Reactor. At least the RB/SB stuff is good, but Rope and Cloth occasionaly get wadded up and thrown out of the scene (literally, it has screwed up SO many scenes for me)

Anyway, as for setting up the deflection modifer, how do I specify the sub-object level? Do I do a Mesh Select and then do the space-warp bind?

My next effort is going to be to see if objects with thickness (so the normals can be single sided and still work!) and from different sources (MAX primitives, ACIS solids, AutoCAD meshes . . .) behave differently. I think that QuadPatches behave slightly odd in a lot of situations, so it might do some good.

GavinO
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Posted: 28th Dec 2002 02:19
Nope. No matter the source, convex surfaces leak. I think that I need to look into other ways to deflect particles. I tried applying modifiers to the stock Deflector, but to no avail. They don't bend, twist, anything.

DBGuy
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Posted: 28th Dec 2002 10:31
are you sure you need any udeflector stuff(dunno what they are.. )?

can't you add your particle system to object collision list in Dynamics/Reactor? I remember you can.. well, I use Max5...

DBGuy

: AMD Athlon 1.4GHz : 256MB : GeForce 2 Pro :
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GavinO
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Posted: 29th Dec 2002 00:10
Doh! I'll try Reactor. Will it evaluate the mesh of Metaballs, or will it just use the dots? Also, what collection type would be best?

As for what UDeflector is, it is Universal Deflector, it allows you to use an object rather than a plane/sphere as the deflection surface. Being stock with MAX, it is buggy like the Dynamics.

Shadow Robert
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Posted: 29th Dec 2002 07:35
lmao... Ahh tis nice to be stuck with the nave of the 3d packages

i'm cold and hungry buht gonna be getting on with a short tech on this in a moment, i think that making some sorta water demo would be best for testing the particles
i swear with all the recent problems i've gotta start taking all this freetime i have and actually working like i'm at work - pitty cause i doubt i'll be able to get on here much. But i'll post the results later today once i'm done

Anata aru kowagaru no watashi!
GavinO
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Posted: 29th Dec 2002 17:34
I tried adding the particles to an RBCollection in Reactor, which didn't work, as didn't using a reactor SoftBody modifer and adding to an SBCollection. You'd think that they'd take convex surfaces into account when programming a collision engine Too bad the UDeflector doesn't have a quality setting to mess with like all the other deflectors do. We might be getting Max5 at school soon, if so I'll try it then.

Shadow Robert
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Posted: 29th Dec 2002 20:27
lol... thats the problem with Max, its just poorly coded
makes using it just a frustrating affair.

Still working on doing this properly, i'm gonna make it work i swear i will

Anata aru kowagaru no watashi!
GavinO
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Posted: 30th Dec 2002 04:41
You know, you'd think that they'd make sure this works so they can show off all the major components at once by having an animation of a waiter walk up with a bottle of something and pour it in a glass, then light it on fire! You get Char Studio, cloth, particles, and environment stuff all at once, except that MAX can't do it easily!

Shadow Robert
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Posted: 30th Dec 2002 04:46
what amuses me is that its like the MOST used package professional for games, but for CG - most people avoid it like the plauge.
I sweat its doing my head in right now, cause all i have literally is particle spray and a heighmapped surface with noise... added the deflection modifiers and have been sitting here attempting to understand why they can't seem to see certain aspects - but when i tesselate, its seems less buggy ... i can't afford to spent 250,000 polygons on a simple sheet
my laptop would keel over and die

Anata aru kowagaru no watashi!
GavinO
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Posted: 31st Dec 2002 23:38
The only reason that I use it is because that is what the CAD/Drafting department at my school has. I'm lucky to be good enough to get the MAX workstation; everyone else has to use VIZ. I agree that tesselation isn't the solution, I tried that too and at the point where you no longer need to shade due to the point density, it got slightly less buggy. But when a render fills up all of my gig-o-ram and my allocated page file, I tend to not call that 'working.' What I've seen of Maya is that it is nearly the same as MAX, except that the stock dynamics are rock solid and the particles are . . . well . . . better. It was a tech demo by a guy who had a few models with hundreds of hours of work on them that he showed off, so I'm not sure just how easy it is. He even had the bit where there is a pre-programmed palette of keyframes for letter sounds to make speech animations!

GavinO
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Posted: 1st Jan 2003 01:44
Hmm. Did another test and found that in any combination of space warps on a particle system, deflectors lose power immediately. I tried having a path follow drive a particle stream along a spline, then had a deflector (The basic, stable one) interrupt that stream, and the effect was limited to about 5 particles in the whole stream of thousands. I think that there is a distinct issue with the whole Deflectors section of the space warp library. I think that I shall now look for 3rd party deflectors to see if this is a universal effect.

Shadow Robert
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Posted: 1st Jan 2003 09:01
yeah thats probably best ... i dunno much cause i've not had to use the animation effects side of things much apart from the past month for personal reasons.

i prefer Maya alot cause it is a more stable less bugged system, with some truely OUTSTANDING 3rd party plugins.
The collision systems and ability to add in fake objects which are rendered within levels and exported to after effects for post-production editing and composition ... well its just a hell of alot better

probably with forcing yourself to learn new things about a product you don't particularly like, is you have to actually use it hehee

Anata aru kowagaru no watashi!

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