Softimage ICE Scattering
polycounter lvl 10
Hey guys, kinda a shout out to any Softimage users here. I'm trying to get the basics of ICE to get a speedy scatter randomization for some leaves to go on a hedge set I'm working on.
I've been following this official Autodesk tutorial... [ame]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DicLkXzoT8Q[/ame]
Having gone through the whole thing there is still one major thing missing to make this leaf randomization work. In the test scene I'm doing I'm using a ball as my "ground" mesh to scatter the other instanced objects across. They translate fine but apparently this node setup doesn't define anything to orient the object rotations by normals. So they all just face straight up like the instanced object and are facing the wrong way on the bottom of the ball.
My node setup is identical to the one shown in the video but does anyone know what nodes would handle the additional rotation information? I haven't been able to locate any scatter plugins that work correctly in XSI 2015, so that's why I've resorted to ICE.
I've been following this official Autodesk tutorial... [ame]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DicLkXzoT8Q[/ame]Having gone through the whole thing there is still one major thing missing to make this leaf randomization work. In the test scene I'm doing I'm using a ball as my "ground" mesh to scatter the other instanced objects across. They translate fine but apparently this node setup doesn't define anything to orient the object rotations by normals. So they all just face straight up like the instanced object and are facing the wrong way on the bottom of the ball.
My node setup is identical to the one shown in the video but does anyone know what nodes would handle the additional rotation information? I haven't been able to locate any scatter plugins that work correctly in XSI 2015, so that's why I've resorted to ICE.
Replies
The Emit from geometry node has to be set to "emit from normal". With the add node on the bottom you could add some randomization to the particle orientation. The "get particle orientation" node is needed to modify the orientation. Otherwise you would reset the value of the emit compound.
Btw, nice to see someone still using softimage here
Okay so I tried running the setup you've got on the nodes but my emit from geometry node is always showing up red. Since I'm so new to ICE just gonna assume I've set it up wrong. Was a little harder to tell what you were plugged into with that collapsed xD
By default my emit from geo was set to emit from normal anyway, so I don't think it was that. Also on your Get nodes were there any specific bits of data yours were collecting? Such as in the Autodesk tut they had the get ground node collecting the number of points, but I'm not sure if your setup had any specific little things like that working behind the scenes.
Also one little thing that's been tripping me up is how with the Autodesk tut they use an empty object to contain the ICE tree as they explain. Can any object such as the ground contain this info? Or does that need to be a separate object as a general standard?
Lotta questions, but I'm just really happy there is another XSI user out there who can answer them. Thanks so much for helping me out though!
This video doesn´t use particle instances, this is why my setup doesn´t work for you. The ICE tree i created only works on a empty pointcloud because the "emit from geomety" node creates particles. Because of this you don´t need to use the "get data" node to get the point positions from the emitter. This is already done by the emit from geometry compound. The sphere object is just plugged into the "emitter" of the compound.
To wrap this up: Create a empty point cloud, not a geomety object and try to recreate my ice tree, then it should work.