I've been implementing my own com server for max (going through mxs can be a bit of a faff ) to add addition dev tools anyway it paid dividends straight away helping to get a better algorithm for find what in or not in a polygon not matter what the depth or heirarchy.
now onto how to deal with intersections, my brain hurts!
Wow, that is impressive Klunk. When I first saw some of your posts about this, I was wishing I had an easy way to create something like this for a terrain shader I had developed. The shader mixed materials based on vertex color so certain terrain features would require specific vertex placement to retain material transitions. For example a dirt path would need the vertices along the edges to blend into the terrain nearby, and my only method at the time was painting in subdivisions essentially. When the terrain was a grid, it was too easy to spot the "resolution" even with height blending and soft vertex color changes. This would be awesome to have(if I were in max) becuase I can't trust maya's booleon operations, especially with history. Developing solutions that cause brain pain isn't all bad (in healthy doses). Its just a sign you are pushing your understanding of some very technical processes.
playing around with a different triangulation routine I stumbled upon..... top is the new one, middle is the sweepline (which is what I tend to use though it's not without it's issues) and max's good ol' ear clipping standard bottom. You can get a similar result for the sweepline for the circle if you scale it down in x or y just to resolve the topology but you would need to know this before hand. in conclusion, on what you would normally come across it does a pretty good job the x & c would be a pretty rare occurance in the "wild" that said it does a pretty good job on the c
ear clipping sucks - i've been getting good results using a version of the old triangle library I ported to python but I don't think it would work that well on the circle
Not I , found it in a book.... mathematics for 3d game programming and computer graphics Eric Lengyel page 270 (IIRC he did a method for generating tangent space vectors)
had a bit of a doh! moment and a humble brag I wrote a documentation generator a while back to handle my MXS extension function libraries (i tried DOxygen but never really liked it's output). It basicaly works by using embedded xml snippets describing functions and it arguments but also as documentation within the code too, it the converts the snippets in html. Its then called post build and pipped to HCC compiler. Anyway I recently needed to update it for documentation of the max com server I was working on which is a cpp interface. Anyway to cut a long story short I discovered the wonders of style sheets and the em tag. Everything is just so easy now what the fuck was I thinking !!! It's about 3 times faster a gizillion times less complicated and files are now miniscule! I've included a sample file (though note the colors and fonts are just messing around and one of the font may not display as intended)
working on how my tree generator operates as a point emitter -- how fronds and or leaves are distributed, well partularly how the normal directions are aligned (the position bit is a piece of piss)
had the idea of a wheel like control with regions that turn on and off when on the normals can go in that direction and off they can't.
then it hit me, thats a gradient ramp of sorts with a radial output and actually a gradient could be useful.
cool I've got one of those but it takes up a lot of bloody room and not very intuitive with a radial output
what about an actual radial gradient control much like the gradient ramp, bit more compact....
so off we go, and now I'm working how render "3d" marker stops that work correctly in any direction
least it will look "pretty" how it might look in a max rollout perhaps a little busy , might be best in it's own dialog
in the above example the emitter normals would be most likely point in the direction where the gradient is whitest when looking end on to a branch (radial angle), the longitudinal angle is pretty simple. the most obvious example would be to make something like.... using something like.... or something like.... with... have also been considering a "3d ball with cones (think spotligh cones hotspot & fall off)" gizmo one for the start and one for the end think that may get busy too. I do have a working solution already... just needs tweaking for more specialist cases so to speak.
playing around with a different triangulation routine I stumbled upon..... top is the new one, middle is the sweepline (which is what I tend to use though it's not without it's issues) and max's good ol' ear clipping standard bottom. You can get a similar result for the sweepline for the circle if you scale it down in x or y just to resolve the topology but you would need to know this before hand. in conclusion, on what you would normally come across it does a pretty good job the x & c would be a pretty rare occurance in the "wild" that said it does a pretty good job on the c
This is rly cool! Is it possible to have the top one has a modifier and with the option of only doing quadringulation?
add new method for my spline emitter for the distribution to avoid clumping on inside corners and sparsity on outside corners a few issues on closed spline with max sdk returning some funky tangent values on corner knots
yeah, it's a bezier ease control (it's actually a "double" bezier to give it more of a kick ), same as the one at the top (which is an overall control where as the bottom one is a per stop variant).
Replies
now onto how to deal with intersections, my brain hurts!
When I first saw some of your posts about this, I was wishing I had an easy way to create something like this for a terrain shader I had developed. The shader mixed materials based on vertex color so certain terrain features would require specific vertex placement to retain material transitions. For example a dirt path would need the vertices along the edges to blend into the terrain nearby, and my only method at the time was painting in subdivisions essentially. When the terrain was a grid, it was too easy to spot the "resolution" even with height blending and soft vertex color changes. This would be awesome to have(if I were in max) becuase I can't trust maya's booleon operations, especially with history.
Developing solutions that cause brain pain isn't all bad (in healthy doses). Its just a sign you are pushing your understanding of some very technical processes.
top is the new one, middle is the sweepline (which is what I tend to use though it's not without it's issues) and max's good ol' ear clipping standard bottom. You can get a similar result for the sweepline for the circle if you scale it down in x or y just to resolve the topology but you would need to know this before hand.
in conclusion, on what you would normally come across it does a pretty good job the x & c would be a pretty rare occurance in the "wild" that said it does a pretty good job on the c
what's it called? or did you invent it?
ear clipping sucks - i've been getting good results using a version of the old triangle library I ported to python but I don't think it would work that well on the circle
working on how my tree generator operates as a point emitter -- how fronds and or leaves are distributed, well partularly how the normal directions are aligned (the position bit is a piece of piss)
had the idea of a wheel like control with regions that turn on and off when on the normals can go in that direction and off they can't.
then it hit me, thats a gradient ramp of sorts with a radial output and actually a gradient could be useful.
cool I've got one of those but it takes up a lot of bloody room and not very intuitive with a radial output
what about an actual radial gradient control much like the gradient ramp, bit more compact....
so off we go, and now I'm working how render "3d" marker stops that work correctly in any direction
least it will look "pretty"
how it might look in a max rollout
perhaps a little busy
I dont care about the UI - what's the logic as you run up the tree?
the most obvious example would be to make something like....
using something like....
or something like....
with...
have also been considering a "3d ball with cones (think spotligh cones hotspot & fall off)" gizmo one for the start and one for the end think that may get busy too.
I do have a working solution already...
just needs tweaking for more specialist cases so to speak.
this is coming on rather well.
death to speedtree!!
still trying to find ways of improving the middle of the gradient
on a side note this was a fun bit of coding.... radial checker (to show transparency)
a few issues on closed spline with max sdk returning some funky tangent values on corner knots