Quick update:
Feature Update is nearing QA completion! Will be ready for release once the Sample and Showcase projects are complete as well as the new Overview video and Getting Started video is done.
UE4.15 was released today and going through the release notes I don’t see a reason for the current plugin version to not work. I’ll be testing everything shortly to make sure.
Big thank you to the licensees with GitHub access for helping during QA!
Quick update:
Plugin has been updated to 4.15. Just a small header edit was needed, GitHub branches have been updated already (master and Feature-Update-2 branches) and the Marketplace hotfix should be live this week.
Finally got This, very nice… any plans on running on GPU? or a way to manage the particles when used on a high poly mesh? you should look at flex and see how they gave options to have more or less particles and how they are arranged. Great plugin though
Thank you!
Regarding running on the GPU: I did have a branch which ran the velocity and constraint solvers on the GPU using OpenCL, but the overhead of memory bandwidth negated most of the performance gains. And on top of that, neither console runs OpenCL so it would have been a PC only solution. Most importantly though, the bottleneck is not in either of the solvers! It’s in the rigid body collision phase… The solvers can handle more than 120k particles at 60fps using the Parallel build of VICODynamics. This PhysX bottleneck is my biggest performance issue. I’m not sure nVidia would give any insight on this issue 
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Regarding varying the number of particles used to simulate a mesh: Most definitely a yes! This will be implemented, most likely in Feature Update 3.
Happy to hear you enjoy the plugin! Please feel free to post any work you’ve used the plugin in, I’d love to see it.
Quick Update:
Marketplace Hotfix for UE4.15 is live!
In some special cases you can save quite a bit of performance on collision if you can constrain your particles to move in a single axis. I’ve tried this on tank tracks and basically use just a single sphere check (on each sub-step before verlet iteration) to know the “boundaries” where particle can be, then on internal verlet iterations I don’t need to re-calculate collision as boundary won’t change till the next sub-step.
That is a really interesting approach! I’ll have to see how I can apply it best in VICODynamics in some way. Thank you for sharing that!
Hi, could you point me to some “getting started” type documentation/video? Our programmer has the plugin compiled and I can see your components in the editor etc, but I have no idea how to get them hooked to a mesh. I tried to load your sample project linked at https://www…com/documentation/vico-dynamics-ue4-plugin-documentation but it refers to scripts and such that don’t seem to be included in the zip. I’m a noob help
A video for getting started is coming soon, just needs to be wrapped up with the last of the newer features coming in Feature Update 2. I don’t have a set ETA though.
As for the Example Project, I got another report regarding issues with it this week. For comparison, could you post a screenshot of the errors you are seeing? I should have a fixed version uploaded this weekend.
Lastly, what version of UE4 are you using and VICODynamics which branch are you using?
Oh, those errors are because the Engine is not loading the Plugin. What folder is the plugin in? Are you using UE4 from GitHub or the Launcher?
Our programmer provided a UE project file with the plugin compiled in it, so yes it makes sense that your sample scene isn’t finding that. Can I merge your sample with that?
e: oops yes, he obtained it from GitHub, let me find out exactly which version like you had asked for
Our dev is not available for a few hours, I’ll get back to you then.
I copied Plugins\VICODynamicsPlugin from the sample project our dev guy provided to Epic Games\UE_4.14\Engine\Plugins\Runtime, and your demo project file loads without any errors (because the scripts are present where your demo project expects them to be) but when I actually hit play, the VICO components don’t simulate. What am I missing?
Could you attach the Output log? This occurs when the Physics libraries are not getting loaded. Should be an easy fix, but I’d like to see the log to make sure.
I’m getting the impression I should just use the plugin install from the marketplace rather than tinker with it by hand, I’ll do that (also I’ll get the log you’re asking for).
e: we bought it from you directly so we don’t have access to the marketplace installer package. If you notice what I’m missing from the log below I’d be happy to hear it, thanks.
Log file attached
Oh, just drop me an email with your original invoice and I’ll set you up with Marketplace access.
Did you run in PIE in the session the log is from? It does not look like it, so could you Play-in-Editor and attach that sessions log please? I’d still like to see what exactly the issue is.
Thanks, I asked Warcabbit (project manager) to get in touch with you re: invoice/list of accounts, that would be very nice.
I’ll get back to you with a play-in-editor log.
I’m on it. Note: we’re using a compile of the feature update 2 from… Feb 20th, I believe.
I’m not sure why or what has changed, but now when I hit play on any of the sample project files I have (after copying our compiled copy of your plugin) UE immediately crashes without any message. I’ll stop and wait until we have access to the prepackaged version from the Marketplace, thanks.
