[Bf-committers] static particles discussion
Ed Halley
ed at halley.cc
Sat Dec 30 17:59:09 CET 2006
I've heard there's someone working/reworking the particle system.
Here are some
observations I've made over the past couple weeks, trying to make a
reasonable
wig setup for a character. I've broken it down to discrete issues
and invite
anyone to comment on relative merits or possible solutions. In each
case, maybe
I'm doing something wrong, but if so, could someone share an
explicit .blend file
that shows how to solve the issue?
As background, the best dynamic hair I've gotten so far is by the use
of multiple
soft-bodied guide curves attached to a scalp mesh that emits static
particles.
* guide curves are too promiscuous
Currently, a guide curve (a curve object with the "guide" physics
field type)
will control all particles on that layer. I'd like to add a flag
to the curve
which says that it will only control particles from the curve's
parent object.
With this, I can make several scalp patches on one layer, each
patch guided
independently: bangs, pate, sideburns, strays, ponytails, etc.
* guide curves disallow material displacement
With guide curves, I could not get the "texture channel 8"
displacement to
work, nor any material-based displacement. Maybe I'm doing
something wrong
but it looks like there are distinct ways these are handled in
today's code.
Without displacement along the lifetime, you can't achieve things
like frizzy
or wavy hair without modeling each kink in each curve.
* guide curves are immune to wind force
I added softbody capability to a curve object, but could not get
it to react
to a wind force. LetterRip was joking when he said maybe it
didn't work
because a curve has no surface area, but in actuality, I think
it's very
similar: no force-application happens on a curve's nodes, just on
meshes.
* guide patches would be great
To model and style hair, supporting a "guide patch" would be a
boon. Strands
would follow the warp (U direction) only, while the weave (V
direction) would
be rooted along the scalp at one end, and hanging freely at the
other end.
Currently, to emulate this, one needs several guide curves which
have to be
reshaped independently to style.
* curves cannot be weight-painted visually
I suggest a weight-painting mode for guide curves be supported;
each control
point would get a small colored sphere or dot that shows the
weight in the
familiar red-green-blue false color scale. Perhaps the
perpendicular tilt
lines could be similarly colored/interpolated to show the effect
more clearly.
That's enough for now, let me hear your thoughts.
--
[ e d @ h a l l e y . c c ]
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