On 3/28/2011 11:50 AM, Alain wrote:

>>
>> the particles slow down as they come near other particles and the
>> global particle mass center.  This is /not/ realistic...
>>
>
> It also can simulate your spheres been in a viscous medium. The fluid
> only have a small effect when the particles are far apart, but have an
> increasignly strong dampening effect as the particles get closer from
> each another.
>

I kind of thought so too. With gravity and environmental CD applied, all 
sorts of viscous fluids could be modeled (if only partially). Each 
particle's influence would have to be very local, though. Certain 
effects could be added to it, such as coloring each particle 
independently which would look awesome (though potentially 
disgusting)... I wouldn't even have to worry about different particle 
sizes, which would save a few calculations.

But I'm stuck with low-count point sets until I can find a way to 
optimize the interactions. I may look into using an octree, but I'm not 
sure POV is up to the task of expanding arrays on the fly. There's a 
macro for expanding an array in arrays.inc, and if I copy it into the 
main source file it might just perform reasonably.

Another idea is to use some sort of nested pigment_map of spherical 
pigments, but I then would be limited to only 96 particles.

Another idea yet would be to use a blob pattern and test against it, but 
POV doesn't have one of those (MegaPOV might though).

If nothing else, it was a fun experiment :)

Sam

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