I finally made time to try out Koppi's bullet physics playground. It compiled
fine (on Ubuntu 12.04), although I had to run ldconfig before it would start up
- it might be worth mentioning that in the instructions.

Usage seems straightforward, especially with the demo scripts for reference. I
like the way it reruns the script with every keypress - pretty fun tweaking a
parameter and watching objects instantly start pouring into the simulation!

need to play more :)

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"Bill Pragnell" <bil### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> need to play more :)

also need to actually attach the image

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Attachments:
Download 'glassballs.jpg' (144 KB)

Preview of image 'glassballs.jpg'

Pretty! I would love to see a larger version, perhaps with some dispersion :D

I had wished to try Koppi's bullet playground myself, but the building
requirements seemed high at the time.

Lately I've been running tests with Blender 2.67. Awesome, awesome app. You can
easily shatter any object into Voronoi cells, and apply physics to them. Then,
with the Cycles render engine, you can trace the scene with believable GI, with
focal blur coming cheap. But Blender's Cycles implementation still needs to
support more features to truly compete with POV-Ray :)

Sam

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"Samuel Benge" <stb### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Pretty! I would love to see a larger version, perhaps with some dispersion :D

I'll see what I can do ;) This version doesn't even use area light photons so I
could definitely crank it up a bit. Might tighten the view angle too.

> Lately I've been running tests with Blender 2.67. Awesome, awesome app. You can
> easily shatter any object into Voronoi cells, and apply physics to them.

I've seen some demos on youtube, it certainly is impressive... although the
cells in the videos I saw seemed a little uniform to be completely realistic. I
intend to get to grips with Blender at some point, but I feel I'll need a few
days solid work to really consolidate the basics, especially since I've not
really tried any triangle modellers properly before. I just can't seem to find
the time at the moment! The bullet playground at least is quite an easy tool to
quickly fire up for simple piles of stuff. I'd like to try some animation with
it too.

I'd be interested to see your blender physics tests, as I'm sure others would
too...!

Bill

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On 26/05/2013 11:26 AM, Bill Pragnell wrote:
> I've seen some demos on youtube, it certainly is impressive... although the
> cells in the videos I saw seemed a little uniform to be completely realistic. I
> intend to get to grips with Blender at some point, but I feel I'll need a few
> days solid work to really consolidate the basics, especially since I've not
> really tried any triangle modellers properly before.

This is true. I spent a week just looking at tutorials before I tried to 
build a model (Dan Dare's Anastasia). Although, I have still not come to 
grips with Blender's Materials and Textures. Once you get to grips with 
the controls Blender is, well I won't say easy to use, but very 
workable. I found that it is straightforward to correct mistakes. It 
does have CSG functionality but it is not as accurate as a pure 
mathematical approach. As for Blender cycles I gave up on it as it is 

Internal renderer.
Once you have your meshes PovRay materials can be used.



>
> I'd be interested to see your blender physics tests, as I'm sure others would
> too...!

Me too.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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Stephen <mca### [at] aolcom> wrote:
> Once you get to grips with
> the controls Blender is, well I won't say easy to use, but very
> workable. I found that it is straightforward to correct mistakes.

Good to know.

> As for Blender cycles I gave up on it as it is

> Internal renderer.

Hmm, not the best, I'd be using it on a Macbook which I think has an Intel
integrated GPU, so no dice.

> Once you have your meshes PovRay materials can be used.

This. It is often said that POV-Ray's texturing is one of its greatest
strengths, so as long as I can learn to uv-map properly in Blender I think I
would always return to POV-Ray for final renders.

Anyway, I'm ready to have a bash in theory - I've already got a second usb
keyboard+mouse so I just need a favourable conjunction of inclination and time!
:)

Bill

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On 26/05/2013 5:03 PM, Bill Pragnell wrote:
> Stephen <mca### [at] aolcom> wrote:
>> Once you get to grips with
>> the controls Blender is, well I won't say easy to use, but very
>> workable. I found that it is straightforward to correct mistakes.
>
> Good to know.
>

Especially the correcting mistakes bit. ;-)

>> As for Blender cycles I gave up on it as it is

>> Internal renderer.
>
> Hmm, not the best, I'd be using it on a Macbook which I think has an Intel
> integrated GPU, so no dice.
>

Cycles is out then as it is with me. :-(
The Blender folk say that soon there will be no support for Blender 
Internal but I've been told not to hold my breath for that to happen.

>> Once you have your meshes PovRay materials can be used.
>
> This. It is often said that POV-Ray's texturing is one of its greatest
> strengths, so as long as I can learn to uv-map properly in Blender I think I
> would always return to POV-Ray for final renders.
>

My plan as well. UV mapping seems straight forward. (But that could be 
the simplicity of ignorance.) You can map a whole object in one step 
and/or groups of faces by selecting them and adding a material.

I need something to build and model my scenes, a replacement for Moray 
and Bishop3D. I hope that Blender can do that albeit in meshes and Nurbs.

> Anyway, I'm ready to have a bash in theory - I've already got a second usb
> keyboard+mouse

O_O
Whit? You can use two keyboards and mice at the same time?
Oh, a numeric keyboard is very very useful.

> so I just need a favourable conjunction of inclination and time!
> :)
>

Yes that is most important.
And may the Gods of Comp Grafiks smile on you. :-)

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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"Bill Pragnell" <bil### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> "Samuel Benge" <stb### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> > Lately I've been running tests with Blender 2.67. Awesome, awesome app. You can
> > easily shatter any object into Voronoi cells, and apply physics to them.
>
> I've seen some demos on youtube, it certainly is impressive... although the
> cells in the videos I saw seemed a little uniform to be completely realistic.

Uniform in size? One thing I learned is that the cells' sites can be based on a
child object's vertices or particles. So if you have some tiny spheres parented
to a larger cube, the cube can be broken up based on points from the spheres.
The cells' grouping can be easily controlled in this manner, and you won't end
up with a bunch of like-sized objects.

> I intend to get to grips with Blender at some point, but I feel I'll need a few
> days solid work to really consolidate the basics, especially since I've not
> really tried any triangle modellers properly before. I just can't seem to find
> the time at the moment! The bullet playground at least is quite an easy tool to
> quickly fire up for simple piles of stuff. I'd like to try some animation with
> it too.

Blender is definitely worth your time, whenever you can spare it. It really has
come a long way in recent years, and is valuable even if used only for its
modeling capabilities.

> I'd be interested to see your blender physics tests, as I'm sure others would
> too...!

I'll see what I can do :)

Sam

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Stephen <mca### [at] aolcom> wrote:
> As for Blender cycles I gave up on it as it is

> Internal renderer.

I have an NVidia GeForce, but it's too old for Cycles :( In fact, my entire
computer is over 6 years old. Cycles is fast in certain ways, and slow in
others. Relatively fast when combining radiosity + focal blur + light-emitting
geometry, slow when rendering glassy materials with caustics. I could really use
a new system :)

> Once you have your meshes PovRay materials can be used.

That reminds me, I can't for the life of me get POV-Ray to work with Blender!
When attempting to render a scene, I just get an unfilled checkerboard pattern.
Seems there's no way to tell Blender, "here is the POV-Ray executable." I may
have to edit the addon's source code...

Sam

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On 26/05/2013 6:29 PM, Samuel Benge wrote:
> Stephen <mca### [at] aolcom> wrote:
>> As for Blender cycles I gave up on it as it is

>> Internal renderer.
>
> I have an NVidia GeForce, but it's too old for Cycles :( In fact, my entire
> computer is over 6 years old. Cycles is fast in certain ways, and slow in
> others. Relatively fast when combining radiosity + focal blur + light-emitting
> geometry, slow when rendering glassy materials with caustics. I could really use
> a new system :)

Don't we all need a new system.
>
>> Once you have your meshes PovRay materials can be used.
>
> That reminds me, I can't for the life of me get POV-Ray to work with Blender!
> When attempting to render a scene, I just get an unfilled checkerboard pattern.
> Seems there's no way to tell Blender, "here is the POV-Ray executable." I may
> have to edit the addon's source code...
>

Well it is a bit soon for me to be using PovRay as a renderer. I want to 
be able to use Blender properly first. But you intrigued me.
I downloaded the latest version of Blender (2.67a)
In User Preferences > Renderer. Enable POV-Ray 3.7
Expand the section and in Preferences (at the bottom of the section)
Set the location of the PovRay exe.
//..\..\..\..\..\..\Program Files\POV-Ray\v3.7 RC7\bin\pvengine64.exe

Save User settings.

In Blender set PovRay as the render engine and render.

I got that chequerboard pattern screen then PovRay started and the scene 
rendered in PovRay. When I closed Pov the image appeared in Blender.

I actually had pvengine.ini open in the PovRay editor (Windows) and this 
entry changed.

[LastRender]
SceneFile=QUICKRES
OutputFile=c:\users\stephen\appdata\local\temp\tmpydyozc.png
HistogramFile=
IniOutputFile=
CurrentDirectory=C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender
SourceFile=C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender\tmpoluh0u.pov

I changed PovRay's behaviour to close on completion and the whole cycle 
took about 4 seconds for a simple scene.


-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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