Raz

22nd March 2003 14:40 UTC

Electric Cube
I took my old idea with the wireframe cubes and the spheres in the middle of them with the electricity running between them and turned it into a big cube, i scrapped the tacky space background too. I think it turned out quite nice but i think it might need that whole depth colour thing. Ive used max blends but i think it needs it because things sometimes look out of place, only slightly and for a second but its still a problem, thing is, im crap at making scope colours, any help with this and the usual stuff much appreciated :)

Shock Value

22nd March 2003 15:34 UTC

I like it, but I think it might look better with perspective. The colors look nice actually, but you might want to make the electricity look more vivid somehow. As far as depth coloring, you'll have to work that out youtself because I have no experience in that area. And finally, you don't need two movements to accomplish the BG. Just use the x=0 one and modify the superscope so that you get the gradient that you're looking for. IE: for that dark on top and bottom coloring, use:

x=0;
y=i*2-1;
red=sin(i*3.14)*.5+0.25;
green=sin(i*3.14)*.5+0.25;
blue=sin(i*3.14)*.5+0.25;

... or something like that, and remove the second movement. Other than that, this looks like a great base for what could be a great preset.

Pixelcraft

22nd March 2003 15:45 UTC

Wow, that's neat....

The color scheme you used is good, I don't think you should change that, but thought it looked better without that gray background, because sometimes the "electric" scopes that connect the cubes kind of disappeared in the background. This made it hard to see the 3D positioning sometimes. But that's just my opinion....

Good Job

:up:

dirkdeftly

22nd March 2003 20:05 UTC

raz...how many times must we tell you to use depth and maxblend? a lot of the time things that are in the "back" appear in front of stuff that's in the "front" because of the way you're drawing it.
otherwise it's pretty nice, make it move tho

Raz

22nd March 2003 20:29 UTC

Originally Posted By The AVS person formerly known as Raz
need that whole depth colour thing. Ive used max blends but i think it needs it because things sometimes look out of place, only slightly and for a second but its still a problem, thing is, im crap at making scope colours, any help with this and the usual stuff much appreciated

Phaze1987

22nd March 2003 22:14 UTC

its electricity with more cubes.Nice anyway but it needs some optimisation :) Damn you`re full of ideas raz ;)

dirkdeftly

22nd March 2003 22:49 UTC

your color coding should be the same for each scope or else that happens

Raz

23rd March 2003 18:08 UTC

Ive got some sort of depth colouring down but its not much use. I dont know how to make it change with rotation. It stays the same with each scope even if it rotates to the front or anywhere. Plus i still cant find a way to use maxblend with them without them near enough disappearing. Any help would be much appreciated :)

Tuggummi

24th March 2003 06:59 UTC

Pretty neat-o, very nice response. But atero is right about the colorcoding, i checked only v2 and it looks weird.

shreyas_potnis

24th March 2003 09:10 UTC

try:
col=.7-z3 ( when z3 is the last z of the matrix)
then multiply red, green and blue bul col (in per point of course)

Raz

26th March 2003 00:18 UTC

Damn this was hard to fix. I got sick of trying to figure out the equivalent of z3 on my crappy 3d rotation so i decided to rewrite my entire rotation method in a different perspective. The z axis is now much bigger and makes the preset look a lot cooler. I have a z3 now and a depth colour coding, i think it really kicks ass the way it disappears into the background at the back and now the max blend works with everything. I need to fix the getosc functions though, it takes a little while to start up :)

edit: changed speeds and attatchment. Much better now :)

anubis2003

26th March 2003 00:30 UTC

Move the fog back a bit and use depth for the connecting pieces so that you can't see them when they are behind the spheres.

shreyas_potnis

26th March 2003 08:04 UTC

Originally posted by Raz_001
Damn this was hard to fix. I got sick of trying to figure out the equivalent of z3 on my crappy 3d rotation so i decided to rewrite my entire rotation method in a different perspective. The z axis is now much bigger and makes the preset look a lot cooler. I have a z3 now and a depth colour coding, i think it really kicks ass the way it disappears into the background at the back and now the max blend works with everything. I need to fix the getosc functions though, it takes a little while to start up :)

edit: changed speeds and attatchment. Much better now :)

shreyas_potnis

26th March 2003 08:06 UTC

Originally posted by Raz_001
I got sick of trying to figure out the equivalent of z3

Raz

26th March 2003 08:41 UTC

I dont care, it still looks better now, thanks for downloading it shreyas... 1 download... by anubis. If you're going to comment the least you can do is download the preset.

I'm glad you all liked it :/

shreyas_potnis

26th March 2003 09:13 UTC

i hadent downloaded the second one :p.
just the first one.

Raz

26th March 2003 16:16 UTC

yeah well, the second version is majorly different and uses all the x, y and z2's and 3's and looks greatly better. Dont comment unless you've downloaded. ANubis, i havent got the slightest clue how to get rid of the very very slight unnoticable white on the spheres without removing the maxblend. Otherwise i like the fog that far, i think it looks good. Are you really going to condemn entirely the hours i put in because of preference?

Jaheckelsafar

26th March 2003 19:29 UTC

v3 looks pretty good, but you don't need 300 points to make a cube. 16 will do. :p

I changed the cube thing and reduced the points in the electricity to 30 each, and it doubled the framerate and still looked pretty much the same.

And yes, the fade is pretty nice. :)

Since you're point points by point assignment (for the cubes at least), you could optimize a little more by creating things in their place instead of at (0,0,0) and translating them.

Raz

26th March 2003 20:16 UTC

I did that in a different preset before i'd done this and i couldn't be bothered doing it again. I will do it though thanks for reminding me. I seem to remember setting the cubes to that because i thought the colours would be smoother but you're right it doesn't make much difference at all also i forgot to change the n value for the electricity. Thanks for the optimisation tips :)

anubis2003

26th March 2003 20:45 UTC

Originally posted by Raz_001
ANubis, i havent got the slightest clue how to get rid of the very very slight unnoticable white on the spheres without removing the maxblend. Otherwise i like the fog that far, i think it looks good. Are you really going to condemn entirely the hours i put in because of preference?

Raz

26th March 2003 21:02 UTC

i've sped it up some more now and you can quite easily tell its a cube, even more-so now, not to mention the name of the preset. Thanks for the suggestion but i doubt theres a way to fix it without removing the maxblends and thus, ruining the effect. Apart from optimisation and maybe moving it just a little back. It's finished.

moltarx

27th March 2003 16:46 UTC

excellent work, i think this is a great preset :)

UnConeD

27th March 2003 17:04 UTC

The code is incredibly unoptimized... calculate common subparts only once, replace division by a constant with multiplication, etc.

For example:

x=(x3/(1+(5+z3)/d))/3;
y=(y3/(1+(5+z3)/d))/3;

can be changed to (d is always 3 in your scopes):

x=(x3/(1+(5+z3)/3))/3;
<=>
x=(x3/((8+z3)/3))/3;
<=>
x=x3/(3*((8+z3)/3));
<=>
x=x3/(8+z3);

In other words, you just change the last assignment of z3 to add +8, and then you can do:

<=>
x=x3/z3; y=y3/z3

Oh but what's this? Two divisions by the same variable. Sloooooow! Instead:

iz=1/z3;
x=x3*iz;y=y3*iz;

I see the x=(x3/(1+(5+z3)/d))/3 code pretty much everywhere... who invented this monster?? The same person who keeps forgetting to fix aspect ratio?

Raz

27th March 2003 18:45 UTC

Thanks man, i'd already changed the d's when i started optimising but i didn't realise about the rest of it. Thanks a lot :)

shreyas_potnis

28th March 2003 05:13 UTC

and the aspect ratio?