Need IPAS Help
I just wanted to thank everyone who took the time to respond to my
questions regarding my problem described in the "Need IPAS Help"
thread, especially Martin for the more detailed info. As I told
Martin, I had to abort the notion of using the Spurt IPAS in order to
complete the assignment, but I've been a little more than curious
since in trying to accomplish this using only the IPAS routine (for
some reason, I seem bent on trying to make things do something that
they are not intended to do).
I finally managed to come up with something that is very close to the desired
result which required a number of 3DS features: Spurt IPAS, Glow and VBlur in
Video Post, Instance Objects, Slide Tracks, Directional Path Tracking w/ Bank,
etc.. Besides the requirement for a certain look, the project needed to be
constructed quickly and in such a way as to minimize rendering time. This
approach eliminated any opacity or other mapping, used only 1 particle, and
even required no anti-aliasing – so it rendered VERY quickly and still was able
to produce the "oozing" characteristics, the solid curved decaying trail, and
stays perfectly confined within the "pipe" object(s).
If anyone has been interested in this, I created an extremely simple example
suitable for upload, rather than describing the setup here. It only uses 1
"strand" of the particle cluster, no pipe, nothing else, and uses only a very
short & simple 60 frame path. I did not bother to refine the decaying trail or
it's timing, etc.. The actual complete animation I eventually produced turned
out pretty nice, with feathered decaying trails, multiple strands, etc.,
enclosed and confined within translucent complex piping networks – very close
to what I wanted.
There are two zipped files: "PIPSPURT.zip" contains just a 60 frame 240×180
flic of the very simplfied example as above, but is sufficient to demonstrate
the effect. "PIPSPMOD.zip" contains the .3ds, .vp, and .mli files although
there's certainly nothing special about the materials. The Spurt IPAS settings
are probably a bit unusual. Both zip files combined are less than 45k. As I
said, if anyone has been interested in this, I've attempted to upload these 2
files here. They are only a purely technical test example, absolutely nothing
fancy whatsoever.
Any IPAS programmers out there may want to consider a routine which would
essentially take any bounding volume (like the pipe), and allow it to be filled
with various types of particles which also will follow the implied path based
on the centerline of the bounding volume, with control over many aspects of the
"flow motion", trails & decay, etc.. No actual CD would be required but would
also be nice – the option for either ideal. A routine like that could have many
uses, such as something like my project, handwriting animation, other types of
flowfield projects, Tinkerbell-style pixie dust manipulations, etc..
Once again, thanks a lot for everyone's time. I was able to glean some info
from the suggestions and incorporate them, as well as come up with all sorts of
variations that I had not previously been aware of using several IPAS routines.
No program I've ever seen is "perfect" for all requirements, but this is a very
nice piece of software that I look foward to using more and more in the future,
especially when the R3 IPAS routines become available.
Gary, I'm sorry I caught you at a bad time, but I'd rather you spend your time
producing quality software like this anyway, rather than attempting to answer a
barrage of questions from me trying to force something to behave differently
than intended.
Regards,
Bill – MEDIA MAGIC