ICE Videos, Tutorials, and Links

[StephenBlair]

This thread is for links to ICE-related videos and tutorials.
Like this one:

XSI 7 ICE winding writing (http://www.vimeo.com/1400443) by Andreas Felix Gebhardt

[GeneCrucean]

The madman Gebhardt: http://www.vimeo.com/sukio/videos/sort:date

Brad Gabe: http://www.vimeo.com/user594481/videos/sort:date

Steve Caron: http://www.vimeo.com/scaron/videos/sort:date

Will add more later.

edit: DOH! Sorry Thiago.

[vfortin]

Thiago Costa:
http://www.xsi-brasil.com/XSI_7/rigidbody_particles/rigidbody_particles.html
http://www.xsi-brasil.com/XSI_7/deform_by_particle/deform_by_particle.html
http://www.xsi-brasil.com/XSI_7/mesh_on_mesh_deform/mesh_on_mesh.html
http://www.thiagocosta.net/XSI7/ICE_tour_103/ICE_tour_103.html

The ICE blog:
http://www.kim-aldis.co.uk/drupal-6.1/taxonomy/term/26

A screen grab of ICE nodes:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.php?p=5251909&postcount=95

[vfortin]

More from Andreas Felix Gebhardt:
http://www.sukio.de/dump/psy_ice_advect_15_mpg4.mov
http://www.sukio.de/dump/fume_node.jpg

[franky]

More from Andreas Felix Gebhardt:
http://www.sukio.de/dump/psy_ice_advect_15_mpg4.mov
http://www.sukio.de/dump/fume_node.jpg

who cares about shading if you can have 10 particles per pixel hehe :) thanks for sharing...

[thiago]

Posted some videos here
http://vimeo.com/user605388 (http://vimeo.com/1470121)

[Tekano]

Thanks to Thiago & Bradley, here is my very first ICE tree that represents Kinetic Energy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy)

this is then connected to a yellow colour blend for each particle

[thiago]

nice, it's same way I implemented here http://vimeo.com/1455513.

Now start to play with randomized mass/velocity and use Ekine to drive states.
Like objects with low kinetic energy get their direction turbulized... things like that.

that is so much fun! :)

[render_bender]

Ambient Occlusion VertexMap using ICE - by Helge Mathee

http://www.vimeo.com/1472943

[DougNicola]

Helge's Greatest Hits - "Ice Medley." This one is a beauty!

"Lightning, DNA Chains, Pseudo Softbody, Realtime shaders on strands, Interactive Occlusion, Simple Feather system, Envelope driven strands, jellyfish etc etc... "

http://www.vimeo.com/1480070

~Doug

[septopus]

Helge's Greatest Hits - "Ice Medley." This one is a beauty!

"Lightning, DNA Chains, Pseudo Softbody, Realtime shaders on strands, Interactive Occlusion, Simple Feather system, Envelope driven strands, jellyfish etc etc... "

http://www.vimeo.com/1480070

~Doug
madness.

soft is advertising ice as a middleman between the artist and the td/software dev
i wonder how difficult it really is for say an animator or generalist to pick up ice and start cranking out [pratcical] work of this magnitude?

[ThE_JacO]

madness.

soft is advertising ice as a middleman between the artist and the td/software dev
i wonder how difficult it really is for say an animator or generalist to pick up ice and start cranking out [pratcical] work of this magnitude?

Some of it, not very.
Strands and strand dynamics are very intuitive, you'd be producing something you had no way of doing before after a day, if not sooner, just messing around with nodes.

ICE is very friendly to ignorant experimentation, unlike coding.

[StephenBlair]

Rendering Curves in XSI 7 (http://frenchdog.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/rendering-curves-in-xsi-7/) by Guillaume Laforge
Using the new XSI strands we can now render curves without the need to write a custom geometry shader.

[dbachmann]

Rendering Curves in XSI 7 (http://frenchdog.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/rendering-curves-in-xsi-7/) by Guillaume LaforgeUsing the new XSI strands we can now render curves without the need to write a custom geometry shader.


could it be that this particular node (Render Curve) is not integrated in the downloadable XSI release?
I do not seee this node under particles/strands.

Daniel

[Tekano]

Daniel,

That is a compound that Guillaume made himself, he has answered this question already on the XSI mailing list - this is the response

This compound doesn't comes with ICE but it is not very difficult to build and it is a very good exercise to learn arrays and loops using the ICE tree ;).

To render a curve you can create points evenly distributed along the curve. Particle strands are a new attribute that give you the ability to draw a line (and much more) between a point position and the a strand position.

For point 0, you can get the position "U=0" from the curve. For point 1 you can get the position using something like "U=1/total number of points * point index".
When you've got all your points positions array along the curve you can build the strands positions array just by using the position from point "n+1" for strand "n".

All the setup is done using standard ICE nodes. Nothing custom. This is the big point with ICE. I won't say you can do everything, but you can do a lot !

I will upload this compound to the new ICE Compound section on Softimage.net when it will be finished. I would like to add more control on the way to render those
"curves" but I can't find time for the moment and I'm in holiday next week !

[talent103]

Wow I a going to have some fun learning to use ICE Thanks for the tuts.
John

[guillaume]

So now the world know I'm on holiday next week :o.
If I can install the trial on my laptop, maybe I will updload this compound in the WE.

[scaron]

typing out loud...

this is going to be interesting, people are thinking some nodes come with the software but instead they are made by the users. since they are seemingly no different and use the same interface there is going to be confusion.

softimage can't be supporting other user created compounds. while it is built using the same base nodes, the logic maybe wrong and that isn't for softimage to handle...

[Zac-Donald]

I had too much fun with the XSI samples
Also take a look at my amazing modeling skills

http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/3244/smilielg2.gif

[guillaume]

Hi,

Here is an update of my Render Curves compound. Demo video and compound are here : http://frenchdog.wordpress.com/2008/08/09/rendering-curves-compound-v1/

I will put this compound on the ICE loader from Softimage.net. I'm just not sure if we can use it for the moment. Can you confirm this Stephen ?

[thiago]

Nice one Guillaume!!
How long would you take to script a tool with all that stuff? :D

[Tekano]

amazing, got lost though when I opened up the Build U Array compound. This is going to take a while to figure out how you accomplished this, it is a fantastic compound Guillaume thanks a lot, sorry for posting your xsi list promise on here - but you got it working so quick anyway! hope you have a great holiday :wink:

[dbachmann]

Wow, Guillaume, it is quite cool to dig into your nodes.
This is a very needed feature so thank you a lot for developing this functionality :)

Dan

[talent103]

Guillaume
Thanks for the Compound and Video. I will play with it this weekend. I feel like its christmas morning and I am opening up all my presents.:)
JOhn

[Ooops]

Posted some videos here
http://vimeo.com/user605388 (http://vimeo.com/1470121)

Hi thiago,

Would it possible to know how you created that proximity map?

Cheers

[helge]

Here's two new tutorials and one scene (created in the second tutorial)

Setting up a goal mechanism yourself
http://www.vimeo.com/1502921

Creating growing strands along a surface
http://www.vimeo.com/1503174

Strand Rank scene...
http://community.softimage.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=117

[Ooops]

Excellent tutorials Helge, thanks.

Keep it up !

[trevlb]

Hi thiago,

Would it possible to know how you created that proximity map?

Cheers

I second that. I've been trying to get something like this to work and am having some trouble.

[scaron]

to get started you can use one simple compound... "modulate by null"

so get the null, modulate by null, and set data on your weightmap.weights value

[thiago]

Actually I didn't use the modulate by null.
The way I did added a lot more features because it can get nurbs/polymeshes/nulls and use subtract from one to another, adjust ranges, operate on negative values, etc...

However I can't upload it because 1- I didn't finish it, 2- I'm in LA away from my computer! :|

But go for the modulate by null for a simple one... and way until I get back to Portland! :) Which will be next week after Siggraph.

[Ooops]

Cheers guys,

Thats a head start anyway.

[thiago]

ok I've found one on my email

Simplified version of the one I'm working at home, this one works with all types of mesh but not with nulls.

so you should stick with the modulate by null until I get back home :)

[trevlb]

Thanks Thiago,

I was actually able to look at the example and re-create it. I think I get what ICE is doing.

I was trying to work with "Get Closest Point" instead of "Get Closest Location". I am not exactly sure what the difference is.

One question just for clarity. Is the "Get Closest Point" followed by "Get Point Position" returning point positions on the grid? If so, the "Get Distance Between" node doesn't make sense to me because it seems it would be comparing two things that are exactly the same. I'm sure it must be doing something else, but I haven't figured it out yet.

Thanks again.

[Ooops]

I had a look too, and from what I gathered,

the "get distance between" takes the location of the "pointposition" of the sphere (which would act as the weight influence object) and the "pointposition" of the grid (with weight map applied), and calculates the distance, then applies that to the weight map value.

Maybe Im wrong and thiago will correct me.

[scaron]

I was trying to work with "Get Closest Point" instead of "Get Closest Location". I am not exactly sure what the difference is.

get closest point returns neighboring point positions. the coagulate force uses this ability. in the context of a mesh it would return the neighboring points.


One question just for clarity. Is the "Get Closest Point" followed by "Get Point Position" returning point positions on the grid?

again its returning the neighboring point positions ( an array of them )

[trevlb]

Thanks Ooops and Scaron.

I think I am getting it. So, the logic goes, find the closest points to each point on the starting mesh (grid in this case), then get those points positions and compare them to the original points positions (grid's points) and get the difference (get distance between node).

One more question, and this might be confusing because I think I typed these backwards in my last post.

At first I was trying to use "Get Closest Point". It turns out the graph only works when using "Get Closest Location". So, if "Get Closest Point" is returning an array of the closest points, what is "Get Closest Location" returning?


Thanks.

[grahamef]

Get Closest Location returns the nearest location anywhere on the surface. It's not limited to actual vertices.

[guillaume]

Hi,

Here is a new ice tutorial (http://frenchdog.wordpress.com/2008/08/12/ice-circle-and-a-cluster-center-method/). It shows how to create some circles of ICE points.
Points can be manipulate "by circles" using an attribute.

Not really a tutorial in fact, but you can take a look at the compound and scene to learn how to manipulate ICE attributes. There is also a video.

Cheers

[Steve_C]

Is anyone having trouble rendering particles?
I have been loading default fire and it does not render but tiny (barley seen) gray particles.

[Ohmanoggin]

Is anyone having trouble rendering particles?
I have been loading default fire and it does not render but tiny (barley seen) gray particles.

It sounds like you are looking at scenes in the ICE directory of the Sample Files. I think those files are intended mainly as examples of how to setup particle behavior, and don't have render shaders assigned to them yet.

Look in the "Rendering" directory of the samples, there you will find lots of nice ICE particle examples.

Hope this helps,
Ohmanoggin

[Ooops]

@ Ohmanoggin

Aah, thx for that.

[ewok]

Hi thiago,

Would it possible to know how you created that proximity map?

Cheers


Hey fellas,

i read this thread today and was very snoopy to build
an icetree to get thiagos proximity map and i ended up with a compound for it.

at first i got a simple weightmap influencer, with no falloff / size control at all.
(see attachment 1)

then i broke up the compound "get disctance from surface" to redefine it in detail.
the actual compound has controls like, radius and falloff strength.
You can use the compound even with a group of geometry, like either poly- or nurbsmeshes. Unfortunately leaves the mixture of both black spots in the weightmap in near distance of them.
--------
bugs / nonfeatures;
-yet there no curve fall off
-no calculating of polys & nurbs in one geom.group
-no interactive use, means e.g. two objects influencing their weightmaps to each other
(only the first plugged compound per object is calcuting correctly)
--------

you can download the compound here:
http://community.softimage.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=129

@thiago, i'am looking forward of your version.

cheers, ewok

[thiago]

I didn't know but theres a bunch of videos on youtube...

this one is impressive http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-TiDr1iN8Y&feature=related

this is nice too http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBqMcHHd6OE

just look for XSI ICE

[mocaw]

I saw some of those yesterday, but it looks like even more have been added by XSI users in Japan. Very cool, thanks for sharing/informing Thiago.

[redmotion]

Do users from Japan have their own compound repository or do they use this one?

Some other ICEy Stuff I've found on my travels:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA07Rox1njU Muscle deform effect

http://coralocean.sakura.ne.jp/ lots of ICE tree screenies - has a nice "hairs grown into mesh fence" effect

[Spurv]

Can anyone tell me where i can find this TUT?
http://www.softimage.com/products/xsi/tour/imgs/simulation_hair/ICE_particle_crowd.jpg

FOUND IT!

http://community.softimage.com/showthread.php?t=1686

[Spurv]

Don't you think we should gather all the videos in one section?

[3dtutorial]

Don't you think we should gather all the videos in one section?


Yes, I do -- things are becoming far too fragmented IMHO.

Cheers,

J

[Spurv]

How can we do that? Maybe it was easier for the Admin to do that?

[tonypolygoni]

Our dear friend Mister A.F. Gebhardt came up with something new and fancy...

http://www.vimeo.com/1656114

[thiago]

Not just that, he was kind enough to share his scene here.

Download it: http://community.softimage.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=159

[evanschaible]

Any good free tutorials out there yet?

- Evan

[flamefeather]

Digital tutors and studio daily

http://www.studiodaily.com/main/training/10014.html

[pulgass]

Hola I'm a new user of ICE and I really get impress so I'll like to know where I can get tutorials and also if some one can explain me hot to do rigid particles dynamics cuz I really want to learn that.

I wait fpr yhe answer gracias