CompuServe Messages

Sanford: >> I'm working on a scene from my version of Rommel' North Aftica campaign…command cars racing across the desert, sand storms, tanks crashing through trucks and dunes, Howitzer's firing and bombs blasting. << Yowza! All computer generated? >> I'm trying to recreate naturalistic liquid and particle flows. Also sand… << I don't want to sound discouraging, but you'll find no EASY solution. On one extreme, you can get your hands on a supercomputer and run a scientifically "accurate" liquid dynamics simulation. On the other extreme, you can paint up some clever animated texture maps and cheat a bunch. It's possible that LenzFX Lumina (the new iteration) would help you out with the clouds and airborne particles–I don't have the software yet, so I don't know how far Aaron's gotten into the Alias-like density rendering stuff. As far as impact detection, you have applications like Keyscript, which contain some rudimentary collision-detection functions, and "canned" applications like Imagine Key Factory, which get more sophisticated. Note that neither of these options are really oriented toward simulating volumes of particles; they're more oriented toward giving objects particle-based behavior. You'll find it a trivial matter to bring your computer to its knees doing collision detection of any sort. I would look first for solutions based on image processing and texture mapped effects, possibly combined with some of the options above for larger debris.