Welcome to thinkingParticles 5.0. 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.
First time users upgrading to tP5 should note this important: Information
Find below a list of changes and additions made to thinkingParticles 5.0
As with every new major release, new functions and enhancements have
been added to thinkingParticles, with the introduction of Release 5 a
new physics solver has been added with the intention of becoming the driving
force behind all future versions of thinkingParticles. Release 5 also
offers, for the first time, a dedicated true soft body rope dynamics system
that can be used to create impressive special effects.
Find below a list of new features in this release
Import File: The world of 3D software tools has many options and solutions to offer. Interacting with external tools and getting the data into thinkingParticles plays an important role to the users of particle effects software. With the ImportFile node, thinkingParticles is offering file compatibility with Realflow *.bin files and Krakatoa *.prt files, both products widely used in the industry for their specific strengths.
Bullet Physics,
the latest addition to thinkingParticles, is a widely used physics engine
that offers advanced features, such as multi threaded physics solvers
as well as soft body rope dynamics.
In contrast to PhysX from NVIDIA, which
will remain a core feature of thinkingParticles, Bullet physics library
is open source and can bee freely accessed and enhanced by a large community
of developers.
To read more about the Bullet physics engine; check it out online at: http://bulletphysics.org
BTVehicle: node gives access to all vehicle based physics simulations within thinkingParticles leveraging all the power of procedural particle effects thinkingParticles has to offer.
BT VehicleData: this operator is perfect to procedurally adjust vehicle parameters at any given time in an animation. In addition to adjusting vehicle settings, this operator can also be used to query the vehicle status and some interesting physics simulation related status variables.
BT Rope: the first soft body physics object available in thinkingParticles. Compared to all the other operators in thinkingParticles, this operator behaves a bit differently; it creates an actual mesh in a fully procedural way. This soft body mesh is based on two points in space were a spline is drawn between those two points, this object is simulated based on a soft body solver, so it can stretch and spring back.
BT RopeData: accessing or modifying the underlying data of Rope objects can be performed with this node. It gives fully procedural access to the Rope properties.
BT
Joint: The BT Joint is used to procedurally created BulletPhysics
Joints between particles. This can be done at any time and can be controlled
in a variety of ways.
BT JointCounter: enables you to get all the available joints that exist between a pair of particles.
BT JointData: BT JointData can be used to either set or get information about a joint. Among the many useful features of this operator are its feature to set a joint's ability to break, it's breaking velocity & rotation thresholds, to define or redefine joint types and Particle To/From connections, and to track when a joint has broken.
BulletPhysics
Particle Group Parameters : In contrast to anything you might
already know about thinkingParticles and how it handles extended particle
data like physics parameters, this latest release of thinkingParticles
offers a brand new way to keep the data structures to a minimum.
In the process of preventing overloading the internal particle structure
of thinkingParticles; a much better "only when needed" approach
to physics parameter settings is used from now on.
EggTimer: thinkingParticles offers advanced Non Linear Animation features (NLA) that let you control time in a completely different way from what you are used to in 3ds Max. The EggTimer Helper is like an alarm timer that runs for a certain (pre-set) amount of time and then stops and flags a signal, which can be used in many ways.
Object: thinkingParticles 5 introduces a new category of helper nodes; Geometry access helpers. In many situations, when creating advanced special effects, there is a need to query about object states and such queries can go even down to the face or vertex level of an object. The Object helper is specifically designed to supply object data to other thinkingParticles nodes.
Math: allows to operate on 2 input values and present the final result on its output port. Various mathematical operations can be easily performed on the input values.
Matrix: offers raw Matrix math operations in various combinations, best used with the newly added Math operator.
Comment: this thinkingParticles Node is a very special one, it actually doesn't do anything to the scene or changes any value in the scene. This helper stores a text, that can be used to describe the wire setup or the scene or anything else important enough to be stored along with the DynamicSet.
Path: is meant to serve as a "path feeder" for operators able to work with splines. Paths are either defined by a spline object or a mesh that has an active edge selection.
GeomParticle: thinkingParticles introduces a new category of helper nodes; Geometry access helpers. In many situations, when creating advanced special effects, there is a need to query about object states and such queries can go even down to the face or vertex level of an object. The Geometry helper is specifically designed to do that.
GeomObject: outputs and uses object (mesh) data. This Node is perfect to base effects or the outcome of other Nodes on mesh related data.
GeomFace: gives access to the Face data of an Object or Particle
GeomPoint: outputs and uses object (mesh) data. This Node is used to query surface-point related data from any mesh, such data can be further used and fed into other thinkingParticles Nodes.
GeomVertex: outputs and uses object (mesh) data. This Node is used to query vertex related data from any mesh, such data can be further used and fed into other thinkingParticles Nodes.
GeomRandom:
a new node to randomly create points in space based on input geometry.
VolumePos : a new temporal interpolation option has been added to this helper node, this enhances particle position accuracy on fast moving emitter by a magnitude.
SurfacePos : a new temporal interpolation option has been added to this helper node, this enhances particle position accuracy on fast moving emitter by a magnitude.
Group Helper: A new Helper node used to feed a group data stream to another Node mainly the Geometry Nodes.
This new release of thinkingParticles 5 is aimed at enhancing the workflow and overall user experience. Workflow enhancements are a big part of every new release, new keyboard shortcuts have been introduced to accelerate the overall workflow and editing of scenes. Check out the new set of shortcuts HERE
Menu entries of thinkingParticles nodes have been arranged into logical segments, which makes it faster and easier to find and operate.
Controls and functions are found in different way now, for example,
all the nodes offering math functions have been assembled in one place
called " Math". The same is true for all time related functions
they can now be found in the menu section called: " Time".
To learn more about the new menu structure found in thinkingParticles 5,
check out the Nodes
Overview page.
If you are already a thinkingParticles user or if you are a new user we
do recommend that you check out the above link to understand where to
find the operators. To find out more about the new structure of
the Helper nodes menu look HERE!
Master Dynamic Rollout Menu: new controls have been added to the Master Dynamic rollout. Find below some new features which are now part of thinkingParticles 5:
Show every Nth: with a virtually exponential growth of particle amounts that are used in special effects new tools in thinkingParticles will help to cope with this demand.
Show Tooltip: a new additional way of debugging particle information is now available through the use of point and click operations that will reveal detailed particle information right at the spot.
Expert Mode: the expert mode has been moved to the Schematic View rollout menu.
volumeBreaker : a new parameter called Max Recursion has been added to the destruction toolset. Now, an object can easily break multiple times until the maximum recursion depth is reached.
ParticleData Operator : Data Channels are now supported by this node. As with many other thinkingParticles Nodes, data channels can now be effectively used.
ParticleData Helper : Data Channels are now supported by this node! As with many other thinkingParticles Nodes, data channels can now be effectively used.
We would like to express our thanks to Pixomondo for supplying the code base for some of the new helper nodes in thinkingParticles 5 . PIXOMONDO STUDIOS GmbH & Co KG Berlin