[TOOL TUTORIAL] Vector Fields from splines in 3ds Max

[p1LL]

hey again!

That makes sense, I tried making a 1x64 and it was quite fast. I forgot to take a screenshot of it, but here is the 32x1 version:



One issue I am having is the direction of the flow. I see there are parts to the voxel array, voxels hit and voxels not hit. is there a way to assign a force to the voxels hit? Would it make sense if I wanted voxels hit to "leave" and voxels not hit to attract? or vice versa? And I have a couple more questions, if you don't mind

Do the length, width, and height segments affect the VF at all?

What is the general rule regarding vector size?

Also, In my mushroom cloud experiment from before, the flow of force came out strange.



I couldn't get the particles to go up through the main shaft and then curl around, they would only curl around if the particles came from above the mushroom cloud top. I will experiment with it more to see if I can make the particles behave, this is still new to me but I a m catching on quick!

[Knobbynobbes]

This is an excellent plugin! Guess I won't be putting off learning particle systems now. Can't wait to try it out. In terms of features, however, in order to speed up the processing of the voxels, you might want to try and allow the user to define what voxels will not be used, like having them place geometry in areas that will not be used and having the voxels check for that geometry.

[Midnight_Toil]

That a super handy plugin man! Thx for sharing.

[Luos]

currently trying to export a 128 density complex vector field setup.
Maybe I should book a vacation

Nontheless, I am so enjoying this plugin!
So once more, thanks!

Edit:

[swat3d]

That looks pretty awesome man!
I've been pretty busy lately but I'll try to work on version 2 soon after seeing what you guys are doing.

[khazande]

good men

Thank you men

[sunlite]

Great script !!!

This is an excellent tool ! Great for creating 'defined path' type vector fields that would be difficult or impossible using Epic's Maya fluids tool (which is more suited for creating complex simulation fields)

I just did a test and it works great:

One question. I would like to use NURBS curves instead of regular splines. I didn't see an obvious way to convert NURBS curves into editable splines, so do you know if this possible? If not that might be a cool feature for your script (allowing NURBS curves to be used).

Thank you for writing this script and sharing it with us!!

[mindfane]

Awesome work!! 5 stars!!!

can anyone port this as a blender plugin??? Its a free software and for simple stuff like generating a Vector field, I don't think we need max. So if anyone could make this work in blender that would be totally cool.

[DotCam]

Thank you so much for this script! I can't believe I just stumbled onto this (thanks Tim!), I've been playing with it for a few hours now and am having a lot of fun with this.

I thought creating Vector Fields would be so much more difficult, this is great!

[paingate]

The script is awesome!!! Thx for this. On a side note has anyone tried using this at a very large scale? I'm not having the best of luck balancing making the VF and splines large and scaling the relative scale 3d in the VF parameters in engine. Also adjusting the velocity to fill in the VF at that scale...not much luck at all. If anyone of you have messed with large sizes using this stuff would love to hear input on it.

[srkibria]

Awesome work!! 5 stars!!!

can anyone port this as a blender plugin??? Its a free software and for simple stuff like generating a Vector field, I don't think we need max. So if anyone could make this work in blender that would be totally cool.

He provides the MaxScript so if you want you can totally just move it off into Blender. I don't know enough about the difference between Maxscript and Blender Python but I'm sure someone more familiar with those 2 can.

[DotCam]

Awesome work!! 5 stars!!!

can anyone port this as a blender plugin??? Its a free software and for simple stuff like generating a Vector field, I don't think we need max. So if anyone could make this work in blender that would be totally cool.

Speaking of Blender (like the post above me), I found this online over the weekend:

Creating Vector Fields in Blender - New tool

Download from here

More info available here

I use Max so I love this plugin, but it is good to see something similar for Blender!! Hope this helps!

[Motanum]

Brilliant! Worked like a charm!

[aviel08]

Thank you very much for this!
It works like a charm! I'm using it to simulate the wind resistance on a F1 car.
Gran aporte, gracias!

[ZioYuri78]

Tried just now and it's very great, work well and easy to use, thank!