Welcome to thinkingParticles 4.0. In our ongoing desire to serve the
needs and expectations of our customers, cebas VISUAL TECHNOLOGY Inc.
will periodically release new Major Versions of its software for thinkingParticles
to enhance its features and stability for your production usage. It is
strongly recommended that you always keep your software up to date.
With every major release of thinkingParticles new features are introduced,
extending the power and flexibility of thinkingParticles by a magnitude
compared to its predecessor. However, Release 4 represents a milestone
in advancing the feature set. Most of its new functionality was born out
of the need from several major block buster movie productions. Roland
Emmerich's "2012" that was all about demolition and disaster
and director John Woo's "Red Cliff" which had an epic ship battle
of more than 4000 burning and crashing ships further more there was some
sequences in the movie GI Joe "Rise of the Cobra" that needed
our development attention as well.
Find below a list of visible and invisible changes done to thinkingParticles
R4. Keep in mind that every new major software release is likely to bring
slight differences to already existing (R3) rigid body simulations as
well as general particle simulations.
thinkingParticles ships with many operator nodes and its great flexibility
and concept of wiring everything with everything, offers an endless combination
of nodes and setups to be used to do particle effects. With every new
node added to the tool set the combinations and possible uses for effects
increases by a magnitude.
This release of thinkingParticles is not only about adding complete new
nodes, it is also about enhancing existing nodes which offers the same
great benefits as completely new nodes would do.
The following existing thinkingParticles Nodes have been changed/enhanced
Intersect
Node: this node received new inputs and outputs to enhance its functionality.
New Inputs: Particle Shape, UVW Channel
New Outputs: Object Position, Face ID, Face Coordinates
One To X: a new more generalized data stream concept has been introduce to this helper node New: the Type of data stream connected and output can now be selected
Surface Pos Node: new inputs have been added to this node to enhance its functionality New Inputs: UVW, Particle Shape
Volume
Pos Node: by adding a new input to this node, particle shapes can
now be used to define the volume for placing or generating particles.
New Input: Particle Shape OP_ObjToParticle:
a new object state has been introduced to this node, No tracking will
not use any transformation information at all except position. New Selection
Option: Initial Velocity
"None" now really does NO tracking at all
Get Reference Operator: by adding a new Number of Refs output, it is now possible to request the total number of references a particle has. New Output: Number of Refs, outputs the number of references
PAttach:
particles can now attach to other particles either relative or absolute
New Option : Absolute
New Option : Relative
Fragment
Operator: a lot of fine tuning has been done to this operator. New
inputs and features have been added.
New in Fragment Shape section: Segments
New in Remaining Shape section: Segments
New function for Edges: automatic texture mapping added
New Inputs: Segments, R Segments
The NVIDIA PhysX dynamics solver is now true 64-Bit.
Serious housecleaning has been done for this release of thinkingParticles,
in the process of streamlining the thinkingParticles workflow some reorganizing
to the operator sections has been done. Find below a list of new menu
sections added to this release of thinkingParticles.
Fragmenter:
Organizes all fragmentation nodes in one section.
VolumeBreaker: Gives access to all VolumeBreaker specific nodes.
Shape Collision: The all new ShapeCollison nodes are collected within
this menu section.
In addition to the already existing PhysX Joint helper object another,
more advanced, Joint helper to be used with the new ShapeCollison rigid
body solver has been added. To learn more about this new helper follow
this link: TP
Joint SC
Rigid body particle dynamics and especially joints are one of the "big"
new things in thinkingParticles that have been fine tuned and optimized
to the best possible extent. The result of our efforts to deliver the
best possible Hollywood F/X tool ever, can be seen in the many flexible
ways to create and use rigid body joints now. At first this might be overwhelming
or even confusing, but once you get the hang on it you won't want to miss
the new freedom and power. Joints can be created and accessed within the
following ways:
Modifer Joints
Object Joints
Operator Joints
Yes, we admit it - it's cool to get new toys with every major release
of thinkingParticles and this release offers plenty of them! By integrating
VolumeBreaker technology right into thinkingParticles in a pure and fully
procedural way the core tool set of thinkingParticles offers never before
seen rigid body "demolition" power. This ground breaking new
technology made movies like "2012" or "Red Cliff"
possible.
thinkingParticles 4.0 also introduces for the first time ever a true hierarchical
rigid body demolition system that enables the control in a exact controllable
way how "connected" parts of a bigger system (house,plane ...)
fly off or collapse under certain situations. This rigid body dynamics
skeleton system allows for a full procedural demolition setup that can
be individually adjusted anytime later when needed.
HFragmenter: this new operator was developed to help in "2012" and "Red Cliff" to allow the creation of all of the jaw dropping destruction sequences.
HFragmenter(Modifier): this new modifier plays along with the operator node mentioned above and it supplies all the needed extra data.
VolumeActivate: first of a kind multi DynamicSet aware operator node used to control VolumeBreaker activation in 3D space
VolumeBreak: this is the fully procedural VolumeBreaker counterpart integrated into thinkingParticles
VolumeCell: another multi DynamicSet aware node that actually controls the volumetric debris creation in a fully procedural way
SCJointCounter: this node is as well multi DynamicSet aware and outputs the amount of joints a particle has
SCJointData: is multi DynamicSet aware as well and allows to change Joint data in a fully procedural way at any time
SCJoint: another multi DynamicSet aware node to create rigid body joints in a fully procedural way through rules and wire setups
SCOperator: this is the all new next generation ShapeCollision with enhanced multi-core support and better stability and accuracy on low sub-frame rates
Camera Map: offers a new way of texture mapping particles based on the camera view. Many advanced particle texturing effects can be achieved with this new operator
X To One: this new node offers the functionality to procedurally switch multiple inputs to one output
In Mesh Condition: an operator that tells you if a particle is inside a mesh or not.
thinkingParticles is the "Mother of all Demolition Software"
and we have added a rich set of tools to enable the user to create realistic
looking demolition sequences in the least amount of time. We want to be
clear about one thing: realistic rigid body dynamics demolition effects
are still one of the most complex things to do in computer graphics! There
is no software tool on this planet that will take away the pain of properly
planning and deciding how the effect should progress and look like. The
tools thinkingParticles offers can help in speeding up the process and
for sure in a later stage it is the best tool available to art direct
a destruction sequence.
The all new TP
Collapse utility is meant to automatically assemble complex constructions
and prepare them in a way for thinkingParticles to allow the creation
of a hierarchical "structural skeleton" of the main construct.
thinkingParticles comes with its next generation of rigid body dynamics
solver: The SC Operator or ShapeCollison 2 regardless
of how you want to name this thing - it's the new rigid body solver in
tP town! For compatibility reasons the old ShapeCollision solver has been
kept in the tool set "as is", so all of the older simulations
will still work and look the same. From R4 onwards it is recommended to
use the all new "SC" operator instead.
The new ShapeCollision (SC) incorporates, for the first time ever, true
Multi-Core (CPU) support for its collision detection and overall solving.
The accuracy of the solver has been enhanced beyond believe and the stability
you can get out of it is unmatched by the old ShapeCollision or PhysX.
Speed is always and issue in complex physics simulations, PhysX delivers
already fast game quality physics, but it is not good enough for the Hollywood
style of effects which need way more accuracy than PhysX can deliver.
Thanks to a much more enhanced multi-core (CPU) support, SC
has to offer, the simulation times can be reduced by a factor as much
as 10 times when compared to the good old ShapeCollision !
Several new Textures and Modifiers have been added in this release.
Some of the new tools are not directly related to particle effects but
can be combined and offer an amazing additional value to do effects that
would be way more complex to achieve without these little tools.
-TP_Deform_Modifier:
used to simulate earthquake like rifts or folds that progress along a
path over time. Other creative uses are possible.
-TP_Deform_Texmap:
an animated depth-map only solution with near identical results to the
TP_Deform_Modifier
- TP TexMap:
has been updated and offers now more features to paint with particles
and textures
- TP_Variation
Texture Map: this texture map, mainly used to texture crowd simulations,
has been enhanced in many ways in this release of thinkginParticles
thinkingParticles offers an additional licensing model to allow network
simulation of files and creating the caches on individual machines. Those
so called "SIM-Licenses" can be ordered separately from the
cebas online store. Every
thinkingParticles R4.0 comes with one SIM-License which
allows you to simulate/write out particle caches on one extra machine
in network mode at the same time you are working on a workstation with
thinkingParticles.
To learn more about SIM-Licenses and how the workflow for batch simulation
works Click
Here
The handling of cached simulation files, created by thinkingParticles,
has been enhanced a lot. Simulation cache files are now really "transportable"
and self contained. They can be copied and moved around and played back
within any thinkingParticles scene even an empty DynamicSet with no particle
groups at all will work and play back the cache file. To achieve this
"transportable" and self contained workflow, every cache file
comes with its own material library which makes it independent from any
scene content.
Master Dynamic Rollout Menu: several new additions have been done to
the MasterDynamic Set dialog. Some of them are listed below.
New Enhanced behavior: with
the introduction of thinkingParticles 4, viewport sub-frame settings are
locked now to render settings by default.
New Feature: Time Offset, allows to change or
offset the playback start time of a cache file
New Enhanced Statistics: Cache file statistics now include more
detail than ever, information like PC name, User name, simulation time
etc. has been added to the statistics window.
New Feature: Cache playback of particle simulations can now be
positioned and rotated in 3D space afterwards.
New Feature: Cached particles can now be Scaled on playback
New Feature: Cache playback can now be linked to an object or
multiple objects for unlimited instancing of caches
New Feature: Sophisticated out of range control for recorded caches
has been added
To learn more about handling cache files check out the following links:
Dynamic
Set Caching Options
Working with tP Caches
New TP_ScriptOperator
- ability to create scripted plugins for use within TP UI
thinkingParticles R 4.0 adds many new scripting functions to control thinkingParticles
objects via MAXScript. thinkingParticles is fully compatible with standard
MAXScript calls, every MAXScript savvy person would be able to extract
all needed functions and methods.
Find below some of the methods and interfaces offered by thinkingParticles
4.0.
thinkingParticles 4.0 enhances the interoperability with finalRender
3.5 - TP4 now supports spin motion blur for rotating particles.