VisualAgnosia

13th January 2003 07:06 UTC

I'm trying to create a marine enviroment .. getting closer
I was supposed to got to sleep I've been awake for so long but I just had to SSC a bit more...

I have a fish bowl preset, hehehe doesn't that make you giggle (like a school girl)??

Im trying to create better fish for it ... one step closer now. I made PLANKTON belive it or not.

They swim around and the bigger fish try to eat them. [childlikelaughter]hehehehehe[childlikelaughter/]:D.

Its almost peeeeerfect but I need some help. I would like to know how to use the texer ape I want my little plankties to have little fish bmp's. But I cant suss it out :( . And I want to make the moving particles (BIG FISH hehehe) either into a fish shaped SSC or use a texer(I really want to keep their colours). I tried to make fished shaped SSC but Faaaaark its sooo hard, they always look like godzilla'z not cute little fishes.

Can anyone make an SSC fishie ???? Thats the challange I put forth onto thee most knoble knights. If I use the you will get Cred and a nighthood.

I use the convolution filter (BYO) in this one so make sure you have it if you dont then you haven't lived. Please see my psudeo-quasi hive minded 3D Plankton.


Remember guys there's \|/

Raz

13th January 2003 07:12 UTC

heh, very nice so far, school of fish isnt exactly whatid call preset material but its a pretty cool superscope to look at at first, I think unconed did some fish superscopes in one of his packs

Otherwise, what are you on? :P.....

And can i have some? :)

Raz

13th January 2003 07:14 UTC

Yeah im a fully fledged "MEMBER" now.... oh yeaaaah, fire the cannons, let loose the wild horses, launch the rockets, set off the big exploding thingymajigs, LET THE PARTY BEGIN!!!!!!!

Or we might not, whatevers good for you.

VisualAgnosia

13th January 2003 07:15 UTC

yeh you gotta whatchem for a while they get more adventurous, as they get into the music track your playing. If you want some of what I'm on just dont sleep for 2 days.. :)

Wha, you think fish no deserve to be in AVS ??? hehehe

Raz

13th January 2003 07:26 UTC

lol i do the same thing, i stay up for like 60 hours at a time then i used to draw things but now i make avs instead, they usually end up products of my sleepines (= shit) but i do it anyway.. stupid, what this has to do with fish in avs i will never know, im just rambling because ive not been sleep in long time either... anyways, like i said, unconed did something with fish superscopes in it, and yeah that superscope is pretty good to stare at if youve not had sleep ina while. :)

anubis2003

13th January 2003 12:12 UTC

I think the best way to have the fish move around would be to do something like unconed has done in his particle engine presets - use a pseudo-random number generator. This would make their movements seem a bit more realistic.

UnConeD

13th January 2003 20:55 UTC

My fish have a swimming movement :)... the fish's target point is moved around onbeat to a random position.
The fish rotate themselves to face the target and move in the direction they are facing.
Of course this requires some tweaking to look right, but it looks pretty natural.

Play around by making a 2D moving particle and trying out various ways of making it move somewhere:
(px,py) = current pos
(tx,ty) = target pos


- exponential approach (px=px*.9+tx*.1; py=py*.9+ty*.1;)

- constant speed approach (vx=tx-px;vy=ty-py;ilen=.1/sqrt(sqr(vx)+sqr(vy));px=px+vx*ilen;py=py+vy*ilen;

- steering
face=atan2(ty-py,tx-px);ang=ang-sign(sin(ang-face))*.15;px=px+.03*cos(ang);py=py+.03*sin(ang);

These are just a few examples, all with different methods. The best is a hybrid between steering and exponential approach, so it slows down when reaching the target but has a maximum speed (in regular steering, it just goes in circles around the target once reached).

VisualAgnosia

14th January 2003 01:17 UTC

could you post your fish preset UnConeD? Any help with how to use the texer? The longer you leave my preset, how it is at the moment, the more realistic it gets I think perhaps if it is slightly sinusoidal. thanks for the tips I'll try to make them a bit more unpredictable.

Also if I start of with n=4 how can I make that number grow slowly and graduly say to 300 in 2 mins or something..

I've had lots of good sleep now, weird dreams tho.

Raz

14th January 2003 02:41 UTC

I havent had sleep since the last post, somethin like 53 hours awake now, I feel like a blender... all nice and squishy and i like toast. But this isnt a contest to see who can stay awake the longest or who LIKES TOAST GOD DAMMIT!!!

heres the preset, its already on my comp, thought i might as well give it.

anubis2003

14th January 2003 03:28 UTC

Visag, You can't do it in terms of actual minutes but you can do it in terms of frames. If you know about what FPS your preset will run at (although this would be different for different computers and/or resolutions, etc.) then you could use this:
Init:fr=0;n=<min. n>;nf=<FPS>*<time until max is reached(in seconds)>/(<max n>-<min n>);
Frame:fr=fr+1;n=n+bnot(fr%nf);

I'm pretty sure this will work. If not, let me know.

Nic01

14th January 2003 03:59 UTC

I have no recommendations on the fishies, but for the plankton :

Use a simple set of sinuisoidal movements and then a random number generator to set them apart. I believe you want them to flock together and then spread out - Just us a variable that increase over time, use *, use min(var,1).
If you want the new planktons to do such routine, you'll also have to fiddle with the point-number (p=p+1 in pixel, p=0 in frame), then use size=max(min(var-p*somesmallnumber,1),0.1) and probably use p1=if(equal(p%var1),p1+1,p1); in pixel with p1=0; in frame - And use var-p1 instead of p. (Var is the rate of aging, var1 is the amount of new planktons in each new set of them).

Hopefully this somehow help - Not exactly wrote cleanly, but...

VisualAgnosia

14th January 2003 04:18 UTC

thanks Nic01, thanks anubis, I'll givem a try tonight if i have any questions I'll post. Gotta go job hunting right now. cyal8tr.

UnConeD

14th January 2003 05:11 UTC

Just a question... if you haven't seen Digital Fish (from Whacko AVS V) what packs have you downloaded? Not to sound boasty, but Whacko AVS V is one of the most downloaded AVS packs on this site.
So if you missed Whacko AVS V, I assume you haven't done much downloading at all, which is a shame. The best way to learn is to look at others.


BTW, I'd stay away from a regular sinusoidal movement, because they will make your preset look very repetitive. This is a mistake I've seen around quite a lot (in my earliest packs too :)).
Instead, try whipping up some sin-combinations and preview what they look like (if you have a graphing program like Maple, or you can use a SSC as a poor man's plotter).

Here are some good formula's I use. For abcd pick random constants in the range 0-1, but try making sure their lowest-common-multiple is high. For example 0.25 and 0.5 are bad, 0.251 and 0.517 are good. This will ensure the period of the patterns is huge.

sin(t*a)*sin(t*b+c)*cos(sin(t*d))

sin(sin(t*a)*sin(t*b+c)+sin(t*c)+t*d)

sin(t*a)*b+sin(t*c)*d+sin(t*e)*f

etc.

I use this for most of my camera movements (they have to be synched, look non-repetitive, yet use as little vars as possible) for great results.

VisualAgnosia

14th January 2003 05:54 UTC

A sheesh I havn't seen that one b4, and I thought I had an original idea. At least mine is a bit different. I haven't seen your 1 to 5 whacko's and I think my computa conneection was "Whacko" whe I tried to download them and had trouble. I have No.6 aaahhhh I love it. Could you email me them please. I do download a fair bit. But alot seem noob cept for the veterans. did you also make the convolution filter UnConed so I know who to give it credit for...

UnConeD

14th January 2003 14:19 UTC

See:
http://acko.net/index.php?or=7

Btw Convolution was made by Tom Holden (it says so in its config dialog :)). All my apes have a short about-box at the bottom of the config with a link to acko.net.