I think the animations produced by all your respective particle systems are
pretty amazing.  I just have a couple of questions which don't seem to be
getting asked.

1.    Are any of you planning to release your systems to the great unwashed
soon?  (I'd love to beta test if not!)

2.  What's the speed of your respective systems like?  How long does it take
to parse/render a typical particle scene?  (I realise this is a difficult
one to answer.  Maybe quoting the times of posted animations would be a good
guide?)

3.  Have any of your tried using non-spherical/non-blob particles?

Thanks for your time,
Alan.

--
http://www.mp3.com/FeedingTheCats

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"Alan Holding" wrote:
> 1.    Are any of you planning to release your systems to
>       the great unwashed soon?  (I'd love to beta test if not!)

In my case not too soon because there's so much work left to do.

> 2.  What's the speed of your respective systems like?  How
>     long does it take to parse/render a typical particle scene?

I'm pretty impatient so I usually don't let frames take more than a minute
to parse+render, often much less. That is sometimes on a 1 GHz machine,
other times on a 150 MHz machine.

> 3.  Have any of your tried using non-spherical/non-blob
>     particles?

I have tried using MegaPov glows and also textured discs facing the camera
and in the future I intent to take much more varied approaches.

Rune
--
3D images and anims, include files, tutorials and more:
Rune's World:    http://rsj.mobilixnet.dk (updated Nov 5)
POV-Ray Users:   http://rsj.mobilixnet.dk/povrayusers/
POV-Ray Webring: http://webring.povray.co.uk

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Alan Holding schrieb:

> I think the animations produced by all your respective particle systems are
> pretty amazing.  I just have a couple of questions which don't seem to be
> getting asked.
>
> 1.    Are any of you planning to release your systems to the great unwashed
> soon?  (I'd love to beta test if not!)

Well, I'm pretty much wrapping the system together. It's not a system that uses
the trace()-function though, and thus...

>
> 2.  What's the speed of your respective systems like?  How long does it take
> to parse/render a typical particle scene?  (I realise this is a difficult
> one to answer.  Maybe quoting the times of posted animations would be a good
> guide?)
>

...and thus it has huge parsing-times (around 1 minute for 300 particles using
"physics"-calculations). Frames are then traced depending on how large the
final blob is.

>
> 3.  Have any of your tried using non-spherical/non-blob particles?
>
>

Yes, it is possible. But the systems mostly rely on calculating one position. So

objects are merely placed at that position. On spheres, you don't see the effect

of rebouncing, which would actually cause the particles to spin or "flop"
around,
like a coin would when hitting the ground in a certain angle.

Regarding the beta-testing:
If you'd send me an ema### [at] TimNikias@gmx.de, I could send you the
system as soon as I've created a little help-file for it, with which you may
be able to understand most of it (though probably not in detail).
If you're looking for the more physically advanced systems, try the others
for some beta-testing, since my system is suited more for object placement
and having several objects move along same paths etc... The simple
"moving masses" stuff...

Ask if you have more detailed questions...

Tim

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Alan Holding wrote:
> I think the animations produced by all your respective particle systems
are
> pretty amazing.  I just have a couple of questions which don't seem to be
> getting asked.
>
> 1.    Are any of you planning to release your systems to the great
unwashed
> soon?  (I'd love to beta test if not!)

I'm not planning to do a fully functional particle system at all :(
I have some code I wrote for fun that perhaps I will put together into a
*real* particle system when I have time (I'm too busy with University at the
moment).

> 2.  What's the speed of your respective systems like?  How long does it
take
> to parse/render a typical particle scene?  (I realise this is a difficult
> one to answer.  Maybe quoting the times of posted animations would be a
good
> guide?)

The last animation I posted took 1h and 56 minutes to render (400 frames,
320x240, +a0.3). Without inter-particles collision things should be much
faster.

> 3.  Have any of your tried using non-spherical/non-blob particles?

Not yet.

--
Jonathan.

> Thanks for your time,
> Alan.
>
> --
> http://www.mp3.com/FeedingTheCats
>
>

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