I'm doing a short animation for our forthcoming youth service in church,
and I wondered if any of your particle systems could rise to the Thomas
Duff challenge! During the animation, Thomas will be doing the following
with polystyrene beads:
1:  sticking his hands in a box and throwing them out
2:  tipping the box over so they go everywhere
3:  kicking through a big pile of them

If anyone reckons their p+les are up to it, please let me know.

-- 
signature{
  "Grey Knight"
  contact{ email "gre### [at] yahoocom" }
  site_of_week{ url "http://enphilistor.users4.50megs.com/" }
}

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I think something like this expects an answer, even if it's negative. :(

So, my system isn't able to do it, and since Rune's system doesn't have
the algorithms to do particle-interaction (particles interacting with
particles),
I guess his and mine is not able to do something like that.

I don't know if I'm right, but I think JRG posted an animation some days ago
with
balls slowly filling a container, so his system might be able to do such
stuff,
though you'll probably have some high parsing times due to the exponential
quality of particle-interaction.

So, just to speak for me:
My particle-system can't do it. Too bad... :(

Tim

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s1631001 wrote:
> 
> I'm doing a short animation for our forthcoming youth service in church,
> and I wondered if any of your particle systems could rise to the Thomas
> Duff challenge! During the animation, Thomas will be doing the following
> with polystyrene beads:
> 1:  sticking his hands in a box and throwing them out
> 2:  tipping the box over so they go everywhere
> 3:  kicking through a big pile of them
> 
> If anyone reckons their p+les are up to it, please let me know.

I thought of a way to do 1 & 3 without particle interactions (guess I'll
have to drop 2. Ah well)
Fill the cardboard box with a large white box, with tiny white spheres
scattered across the top to give the impression of the box being full.
Now Thomas pushes his hands into the box as normal (POV-Ray's lack of
built-in collision detection comes in handy for a change), and as he
brings them out, we attach a hemispherical particle emitter to his hand.
The emitter sprays white spheres upwards, and we need only perform
collision checking with Thomas' arm and the floor! (I'm going for a
cartoony look, so Thomas' arm is composed of cylinders and spheres)

Surely somebody's system can manage that? I've seen all sorts of stuff
coming out of you, including toroidal emitters, so this shouldn't be too
hard...

-- 
signature{
  "Grey Knight"
  contact{ email "gre### [at] yahoocom" }
  site_of_week{ url "http://enphilistor.users4.50megs.com/" }
}

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s1631001 wrote:

> > 1:  sticking his hands in a box and throwing them out
> > 2:  tipping the box over so they go everywhere
> > 3:  kicking through a big pile of them

> I thought of a way to do 1 & 3 without particle interactions (guess I'll
> have to drop 2. Ah well)
> Fill the cardboard box with a large white box, with tiny white spheres
> scattered across the top to give the impression of the box being full.
> Now Thomas pushes his hands into the box as normal (POV-Ray's lack of
> built-in collision detection comes in handy for a change), and as he
> brings them out, we attach a hemispherical particle emitter to his hand.
> The emitter sprays white spheres upwards, and we need only perform
> collision checking with Thomas' arm and the floor! (I'm going for a
> cartoony look, so Thomas' arm is composed of cylinders and spheres)
>
> Surely somebody's system can manage that? I've seen all sorts of stuff
> coming out of you, including toroidal emitters, so this shouldn't be too
> hard...

My system can handle hemispherical (or any other concievable shape) emitter,
_but_ (and it's a big but) it cannot handle a moving environment. Moving
environments are trickier to accomodate than I think you might realise. I am
sorry I can't help you.

Also, I am writing my own system mostly for the challenge. The challenge here is
to do the three requested steps with proper particle collisions. Getting it to
"look about right" without the proper collisions just isn't as satisfying :-)

MJL

--
light_source{12*(y-z)rgb 2fade_distance 9fade_power 2area_light x,z,5,5}#macro A
(H,B,R,T)prism{0,1H+4,0u*9,9v*9,0#local I=1;#while(I<H)#local V=asc(substr(B,I,1
))-33;<div(V,10)mod(V,10)>#local I=I+1;#end pigment{red 1}rotate-<90,R>translate
-T}#end A(16"/.@VZno=<PLA89/"0,5*x)A(14",6;MWmhryXN3,"60<15,0,8>)camera{location
25*(y-z)look_at 0}A(8"6hiAG=6"-60,-10*x)box{-99(x+z)*99 pigment{rgb 1}}   // MJL

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