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Simulating Realistic Flocking Behavior in Carrara using PyCarrara

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  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,549
    edited December 1969

    Very cool.
    I loved the "Breaking the Ice" film! (FD's links above)

    Massive, used to create the behaviors in the LoTR series, is quite the sophisticated system.
    After watching all of the special features sections from the extended edition dvds, I did a search and found the same "Massive" used, and it was tens of thousands of dollars to get started with, and then options on how you could keep that license - which was thousands per year. The LoTR SFX team sure got great results - and they had the help of the developer all along, I think. Pretty sophisticated stuff.

  • FractalDimensiaFractalDimensia Posts: 0
    edited October 2013

    Dartanbeck said:
    Very cool.
    I loved the "Breaking the Ice" film! (FD's links above)

    Massive, used to create the behaviors in the LoTR series, is quite the sophisticated system.
    After watching all of the special features sections from the extended edition dvds, I did a search and found the same "Massive" used, and it was tens of thousands of dollars to get started with, and then options on how you could keep that license - which was thousands per year. The LoTR SFX team sure got great results - and they had the help of the developer all along, I think. Pretty sophisticated stuff.

    Back in late 80's, I got a wonderful short VHS tape that had 8-9 computer animations. (I tried to convince everyone I bought it for my kids, babies at the time, but not sure I succeeded there. ;) ) One of the animations on that tape was "Breaking the Ice." It was by far my favorite, and I always imagined I would one day make shorts like those. It took 25 years, but I am getting close to that day! :)

    I doubt Carrara will be able to handle the load of the LoTR SFX scenes, but wouldn't it be nice to at least be playing in the little league? ;)

    Along those lines, I have been able to work out most of the technical design issues for creating terrain-following swarms. It's a fairly simple solution:
    1) User will saves the terrain map as a bitmap (in the Terrain Editor)
    2) PySwarm will read this map
    3) PySwarm will translate (x,y) coordinates of individuals onto the map and identify closest pixels, which provide height information
    4) PySwarm will interpolate height and position the individual at a specific height above the terrain

    Assuming I don't run into any glitches, I should have a working version of that in Version 0.4.

    Post edited by FractalDimensia on
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