Re: PointLocators in ICE
Being able to store them as static ice atttribute and eventuallycache them would be usefull too ! I'm also curious about why we don't have a deeper access to locations, could some SI dev elaborate about that? Is there still rooms for improvement? Cheers. --- Ahmidou Lyazidi Director | TD | CG artist http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos http://www.cappuccino-films.com 2013/6/12 Vladimir Jankijevic vladi...@elefantstudios.ch +100 It would be great to have access to this data. The ability to build my own locations would be useful sometimes :) It's a shame we haven't seen any development in that area :( On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 1:37 AM, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: locators are more or less that, barycentric coordinates coupled with a facet index kinda thing. Why they are not exposed atomically isn't 100% clear. It might be some eval issues with those atoms if they were to be exposed, just lack of foresight in the implementation somewhere back then, simply something missing that might one day come, or they might look up additional data of sorts (accelstruct?) and can't be decoupled from that. Regardless, they can't be cracked open that I know of, not to read from them more granular-ly, nor to write directly into or over one. On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 1:46 PM, Vincent Fortin vfor...@gmail.comwrote: Figured I'd start a new thread. This has been arousing my curiosity for a while and I need your wisdom :-) In Houdini I build locations by providing a polygon index and what is called a uv parametric location. The term uv is misleading here. All it is, is a coordinate on each polygon plane. Softimage's sdk calls it subtriangle barycentric weights. So along with the polygon index and the vertex indices I managed to build my location in python. I didn't test this thoroughly but I seem to be getting an equivalent to what I'm used to in Houdini. With regard to recreate this in ICE: 1) Do we have access to the necessary data? (that is, polygon index, subtriangle indices and the normalized weights on the triangle?) 2) How would we go about assembling it? I understand this all sounds a bit abstract. Like everyone I use locations a lot in ICE, they're amazing and manipulating them is easy. Maybe there is no need for exposing lower-level functionalities. I'm merely experimenting here to see how far I can push them. An example would be to access those barycentric coordinates and, say, slide a particle on a polygon without having to resort to the Get Closest Location node. Thoughts? -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are! -- --- Vladimir Jankijevic Technical Direction Elefant Studios AG Lessingstrasse 15 CH-8002 Zürich +41 44 500 48 20 www.elefantstudios.ch ---
Re: PointLocators in ICE
Thanks guys for your answers. That pretty much confirms my suspicions about locations in ICE. Oh well, hopefully I can make it to the next beta and make a few suggestions. Another approach that would serve the same purpose in some cases is to be able to use texturing UVs to drive the location. Kinda like a UV to Location but for polygons. Beating a dead horse for sure but this stuff is so mysterious I can't help wondering... On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 4:18 AM, Ahmidou Lyazidi ahmidou@gmail.comwrote: Being able to store them as static ice atttribute and eventuallycache them would be usefull too ! I'm also curious about why we don't have a deeper access to locations, could some SI dev elaborate about that? Is there still rooms for improvement? Cheers. --- Ahmidou Lyazidi Director | TD | CG artist http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos http://www.cappuccino-films.com 2013/6/12 Vladimir Jankijevic vladi...@elefantstudios.ch +100 It would be great to have access to this data. The ability to build my own locations would be useful sometimes :) It's a shame we haven't seen any development in that area :( On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 1:37 AM, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: locators are more or less that, barycentric coordinates coupled with a facet index kinda thing. Why they are not exposed atomically isn't 100% clear. It might be some eval issues with those atoms if they were to be exposed, just lack of foresight in the implementation somewhere back then, simply something missing that might one day come, or they might look up additional data of sorts (accelstruct?) and can't be decoupled from that. Regardless, they can't be cracked open that I know of, not to read from them more granular-ly, nor to write directly into or over one. On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 1:46 PM, Vincent Fortin vfor...@gmail.comwrote: Figured I'd start a new thread. This has been arousing my curiosity for a while and I need your wisdom :-) In Houdini I build locations by providing a polygon index and what is called a uv parametric location. The term uv is misleading here. All it is, is a coordinate on each polygon plane. Softimage's sdk calls it subtriangle barycentric weights. So along with the polygon index and the vertex indices I managed to build my location in python. I didn't test this thoroughly but I seem to be getting an equivalent to what I'm used to in Houdini. With regard to recreate this in ICE: 1) Do we have access to the necessary data? (that is, polygon index, subtriangle indices and the normalized weights on the triangle?) 2) How would we go about assembling it? I understand this all sounds a bit abstract. Like everyone I use locations a lot in ICE, they're amazing and manipulating them is easy. Maybe there is no need for exposing lower-level functionalities. I'm merely experimenting here to see how far I can push them. An example would be to access those barycentric coordinates and, say, slide a particle on a polygon without having to resort to the Get Closest Location node. Thoughts? -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are! -- --- Vladimir Jankijevic Technical Direction Elefant Studios AG Lessingstrasse 15 CH-8002 Zürich +41 44 500 48 20 www.elefantstudios.ch ---
Re: PointLocators in ICE
... to be able to use texturing UVs to drive the location. Kinda like a UV to Location but for polygons. Beating a dead horse for sure but this stuff is so mysterious I can't help wondering... Maybe ask Gustavo how he approached his UV to Position ICE magic? https://vimeo.com/36464429 On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 11:52 AM, Vincent Fortin vfor...@gmail.com wrote: Thanks guys for your answers. That pretty much confirms my suspicions about locations in ICE. Oh well, hopefully I can make it to the next beta and make a few suggestions. Another approach that would serve the same purpose in some cases is to be able to use texturing UVs to drive the location. Kinda like a UV to Location but for polygons. Beating a dead horse for sure but this stuff is so mysterious I can't help wondering... On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 4:18 AM, Ahmidou Lyazidi ahmidou@gmail.comwrote: Being able to store them as static ice atttribute and eventuallycache them would be usefull too ! I'm also curious about why we don't have a deeper access to locations, could some SI dev elaborate about that? Is there still rooms for improvement? Cheers. --- Ahmidou Lyazidi Director | TD | CG artist http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos http://www.cappuccino-films.com 2013/6/12 Vladimir Jankijevic vladi...@elefantstudios.ch +100 It would be great to have access to this data. The ability to build my own locations would be useful sometimes :) It's a shame we haven't seen any development in that area :( On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 1:37 AM, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: locators are more or less that, barycentric coordinates coupled with a facet index kinda thing. Why they are not exposed atomically isn't 100% clear. It might be some eval issues with those atoms if they were to be exposed, just lack of foresight in the implementation somewhere back then, simply something missing that might one day come, or they might look up additional data of sorts (accelstruct?) and can't be decoupled from that. Regardless, they can't be cracked open that I know of, not to read from them more granular-ly, nor to write directly into or over one. On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 1:46 PM, Vincent Fortin vfor...@gmail.comwrote: Figured I'd start a new thread. This has been arousing my curiosity for a while and I need your wisdom :-) In Houdini I build locations by providing a polygon index and what is called a uv parametric location. The term uv is misleading here. All it is, is a coordinate on each polygon plane. Softimage's sdk calls it subtriangle barycentric weights. So along with the polygon index and the vertex indices I managed to build my location in python. I didn't test this thoroughly but I seem to be getting an equivalent to what I'm used to in Houdini. With regard to recreate this in ICE: 1) Do we have access to the necessary data? (that is, polygon index, subtriangle indices and the normalized weights on the triangle?) 2) How would we go about assembling it? I understand this all sounds a bit abstract. Like everyone I use locations a lot in ICE, they're amazing and manipulating them is easy. Maybe there is no need for exposing lower-level functionalities. I'm merely experimenting here to see how far I can push them. An example would be to access those barycentric coordinates and, say, slide a particle on a polygon without having to resort to the Get Closest Location node. Thoughts? -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are! -- --- Vladimir Jankijevic Technical Direction Elefant Studios AG Lessingstrasse 15 CH-8002 Zürich +41 44 500 48 20 www.elefantstudios.ch ---
Re: PointLocators in ICE
Oh nice.. thanks a lot for pointing that out! On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 1:33 PM, Alan Fregtman alan.fregt...@gmail.comwrote: ... to be able to use texturing UVs to drive the location. Kinda like a UV to Location but for polygons. Beating a dead horse for sure but this stuff is so mysterious I can't help wondering... Maybe ask Gustavo how he approached his UV to Position ICE magic? https://vimeo.com/36464429 On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 11:52 AM, Vincent Fortin vfor...@gmail.comwrote: Thanks guys for your answers. That pretty much confirms my suspicions about locations in ICE. Oh well, hopefully I can make it to the next beta and make a few suggestions. Another approach that would serve the same purpose in some cases is to be able to use texturing UVs to drive the location. Kinda like a UV to Location but for polygons. Beating a dead horse for sure but this stuff is so mysterious I can't help wondering... On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 4:18 AM, Ahmidou Lyazidi ahmidou@gmail.comwrote: Being able to store them as static ice atttribute and eventuallycache them would be usefull too ! I'm also curious about why we don't have a deeper access to locations, could some SI dev elaborate about that? Is there still rooms for improvement? Cheers. --- Ahmidou Lyazidi Director | TD | CG artist http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos http://www.cappuccino-films.com 2013/6/12 Vladimir Jankijevic vladi...@elefantstudios.ch +100 It would be great to have access to this data. The ability to build my own locations would be useful sometimes :) It's a shame we haven't seen any development in that area :( On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 1:37 AM, Raffaele Fragapane raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote: locators are more or less that, barycentric coordinates coupled with a facet index kinda thing. Why they are not exposed atomically isn't 100% clear. It might be some eval issues with those atoms if they were to be exposed, just lack of foresight in the implementation somewhere back then, simply something missing that might one day come, or they might look up additional data of sorts (accelstruct?) and can't be decoupled from that. Regardless, they can't be cracked open that I know of, not to read from them more granular-ly, nor to write directly into or over one. On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 1:46 PM, Vincent Fortin vfor...@gmail.comwrote: Figured I'd start a new thread. This has been arousing my curiosity for a while and I need your wisdom :-) In Houdini I build locations by providing a polygon index and what is called a uv parametric location. The term uv is misleading here. All it is, is a coordinate on each polygon plane. Softimage's sdk calls it subtriangle barycentric weights. So along with the polygon index and the vertex indices I managed to build my location in python. I didn't test this thoroughly but I seem to be getting an equivalent to what I'm used to in Houdini. With regard to recreate this in ICE: 1) Do we have access to the necessary data? (that is, polygon index, subtriangle indices and the normalized weights on the triangle?) 2) How would we go about assembling it? I understand this all sounds a bit abstract. Like everyone I use locations a lot in ICE, they're amazing and manipulating them is easy. Maybe there is no need for exposing lower-level functionalities. I'm merely experimenting here to see how far I can push them. An example would be to access those barycentric coordinates and, say, slide a particle on a polygon without having to resort to the Get Closest Location node. Thoughts? -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are! -- --- Vladimir Jankijevic Technical Direction Elefant Studios AG Lessingstrasse 15 CH-8002 Zürich +41 44 500 48 20 www.elefantstudios.ch ---
Re: PointLocators in ICE
It is pretty much Helge's pixel particles but implemented through (slower) ICE implementation. Basically it uses barycentric coordinates to get the equivalent position in a 2d (uv) and 3d (xyz) triangle. I remember some bottlenecks like: - Having to create a triangulated clone of the geometry, because it makes difference to how stuff works in 2d. I rember trying to avoid it with all my efforts, but it was useless... - Outputing locations instead of positions was a problem, but now thinking about it I cant remember why. It should be quite possible with reinterpret location on geo, right? I dont know... It should be fairly documented if you want to dive into it (at least that is how I recall it).
Re: PointLocators in ICE
Gustavo, are you saying the compound is available somewhere for me to dive into, update my brain with latest firmware and waste another night of sleep? please sign me up On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 3:00 PM, Gustavo Eggert Boehs gustav...@gmail.comwrote: It is pretty much Helge's pixel particles but implemented through (slower) ICE implementation. Basically it uses barycentric coordinates to get the equivalent position in a 2d (uv) and 3d (xyz) triangle. I remember some bottlenecks like: - Having to create a triangulated clone of the geometry, because it makes difference to how stuff works in 2d. I rember trying to avoid it with all my efforts, but it was useless... - Outputing locations instead of positions was a problem, but now thinking about it I cant remember why. It should be quite possible with reinterpret location on geo, right? I dont know... It should be fairly documented if you want to dive into it (at least that is how I recall it).
PointLocators in ICE
Figured I'd start a new thread. This has been arousing my curiosity for a while and I need your wisdom :-) In Houdini I build locations by providing a polygon index and what is called a uv parametric location. The term uv is misleading here. All it is, is a coordinate on each polygon plane. Softimage's sdk calls it subtriangle barycentric weights. So along with the polygon index and the vertex indices I managed to build my location in python. I didn't test this thoroughly but I seem to be getting an equivalent to what I'm used to in Houdini. With regard to recreate this in ICE: 1) Do we have access to the necessary data? (that is, polygon index, subtriangle indices and the normalized weights on the triangle?) 2) How would we go about assembling it? I understand this all sounds a bit abstract. Like everyone I use locations a lot in ICE, they're amazing and manipulating them is easy. Maybe there is no need for exposing lower-level functionalities. I'm merely experimenting here to see how far I can push them. An example would be to access those barycentric coordinates and, say, slide a particle on a polygon without having to resort to the Get Closest Location node. Thoughts?
