#Waterfall
3 messages in this thread
Hi John Ellis et al:
I've been getting questions on the subject of waterfalls recently.
The following may be of general interest.
1. If you own TSE you already have my Waterfall script, it
is called: WATRFALL.P3D.
2. There are NO instructions: just run it!
All required items are created from scratch, including a
panning camera! On my 486-66, the script finishes in about
7 minutes (creating a 200-particle, 70-frame animation).
If you don't have TSE, you can see what the script does by
downloading PXPEG1.ZIP, a 1.2 Meg file in the Showcase Forum
(GO ASHOWCASE). That animation was done with an earlier
version of the script (which didn't move the camera).
Martin D. supplied camera motion, and fine-tuned the
blur settings.
3. WATRFALL.P3D was modified and also used to create, the well
received, "TSE Water!" (WAXX42.ZIP, 127,500 bytes). For that
Animation I used AniPro to combine several layers of water.
Now that I understand the Video Post better (thanks John
Ellis!), I realize it could have done there instead.
4. The script can be easily changed to do other particle system
animations.
Ed K.
Thanks Ed,
Would seem rather simple… <g> I'll give it another go.
Regards,
John
Ed,
Well this is totally nuts! First because the little box that comes up says
"this may take awhile… " so of course I wait and I wait, and 7 hours go by
and I think did Ed say 7 mins or 7 hours…. (it gets better…)
So I finally clicked on the box and all of a sudden it starts generating
keyframes…. that doesn't take long I think… and then when its done it says
use the Camera Script_gen… so I'm looking through all the scripts for the
script which has something like "script_gen" in it… well by this point I'm
thinking, what if I just render it the old fashion way… <G> So I click on a
viewport and click to get the camera lined up and guess what?
The camera is called Script_gen! Now Ed, I don't typically think of myself as
being real dense but seriously…. you got me good with that one. <g>
Then, you've got this thing in the script that talks about seeing spheres, so
after it renders I'm looking for the spheres… (I hide the boxes btw), and
what I see is this little white double pyramids cascading down and kinda
bouncing off the area that the boxes would have been in. Hmmm I'm thinking,
well the little white boxes don't look like spheres, so I think maybe there was
supposed to be a material assigned, I check and its the default white, thought
maybe the map wasn't in the right directory… but upon reading through the
script it becomes evident there's no material applied… by this time its
dawning on me that maybe what you're referring to is the invisible object the
white boxes are bouncing on… sure it looks like the boxes are hitting
invisible spheres and bouncing off… O.K. so I got it!
But the really nutting thing is, its really neat! Those little boxes have a
life of their own. They don't look anything like what you would expect
keyframed motion to look like because its so fluid. I find this most
interesting, though I'm probably not explaining very well. Yes I've created
very smooth animation motion, but these boxes look like they're alive and I'm
not sure why… maybe is the elasticity or "exponent" you put in, whatever its
quite amazing.
BTW once I figured out getting past the dialog box, everything went really
quickly… I think that box labeling is trouble. <g>
And I point all this up just because I think future examples might benefit from
a little step by step doc. What seems obvious isn't always…
But it was certainly worth it… Thanks!
Cheers,
John