Hi there,

does anyone know good resources for 3d ecosystem tutorials, paid or free? The ones at geekatplay.com I viewed, but  that's not enough ... 

Also looking for tutorials about how to built mats which scaling with the object ...

Thanks for advice right now

kind regards,

 

Volker

Check out AsileFX.net.

Thanks. I looked but the tuts only cover small parts of the things I'm after ...  so more advices are welcome.

What exactly are you looking for? AsileFx has great and in depth tutorials on ecosystems and material creation...

Yes, indeed.

But I look especially for in depth tutorials for so called 3D ecosystems as my task is to simulate some swarm behaviour, like bee swarms or bird swarms. The tutorials from geekatplay.com are a good base, but unfortunately there is not enough time for trial and error to come behind the advanced secrets of Vue 3D ecosystems. When there is nothing on the market I have to decide the use of another software with a particle system (but that's more expensive and -/render/-time consuming than I want, so that is Plan D).

At AsileFX I found very good tutorial for populate "normal" things like hills, fields and so on, but there was no special topic about my special problem...

You want an animated ecosystem? It's possible, but only using preanimated meshes, either imported (Poser, Collada,...) or the ones you get from Cornucopia.

It's not a question of animating the things, it's the question of distributing the things in the right way.  The client want stills, not animations.  My thought was that the things are easyer to handle with Vue ecosystems as with high end 3D apps like Maya.  As I didn't work for a long time with particle systems (and they can be very very tricky in the setup) my first choice was Vue.

Hmm. seems that I have to make new arrangements ...  :mellow:

Thank you for your engagement.

what version of vue do you have? carbon scatter.com have a set of tutorials that deal with density and affinity and repulsion that might benefit you, i know that this is a plug in but it is derived from standard vue menus so you should be able to translate what you have learned there into vue. i think its mainly the layer affinity/repulsion you need to focus on.

Hope this helps

 A cleaved head no longer plots.

http://www.perilous7.moonfruit.com

Thank you much, I'll have a look. Actually I'm on Vue9 Complete.

Hello!

Vue doesn't directly support 3D eco systems, but you can fake them buy driving the vertical position of instrances with a function. The easiest way is to get the "swarm" eco system from Martin Frost: http://www.cornucopia3d.com/purchase.php?item_id=6256

When you look at that you can see how it is set up and you can start from there by replacing his instances with yours. I used this approacch for the bird swarm in the image above. You can use any geometry as a base, I prefer to use an invisible terrain to add more control.

Ciao

TD

Oh, so this is what you meant by 3D ecosystems? Ecosystems that are not on a surface?

Quote - But I look especially for in depth tutorials for so called 3D ecosystems as my task is to simulate some swarm behaviour, like bee swarms or bird swarms.

Not sure, but I was going by this bit of info.

Another possibility is to use the scatter function, but that gives much less control than an ecosystem.

Ciao

TD

Ahhh, yes. I missed this.  As I see in a picture from Martin he's in the same situation like I am. A "wild", swirly swarm is not the big problem, but a "ordered" swarm, as most fish swarms, become very difficult when the objects should face the same direction ... You have to imagine a sphere ...  at the equator all objects have to rotate around a point in the middle of the sphere and the objects are parallel to the sphere surface. But on any other point of the sphere the object should be upright (= no more parallel to the sphere surface), but also have to rotate around the y-axis of the sphere ... That was the plan, to built a "object ball" .

Perhaps this only possible with Vue 10 and the vector path option ...  :huh:

Not 100% sure I understand correctly, but do you mean something like this (image above)?I left the sphere visible to illustrate the effect and I only used one half of it. To populate the bottom half one would use a second aphere and rotate it after population or paint the ecosystem.

TD

You mean you want all ecosystem specimen to look at one point, regardless of their position and orientation?

Attached Link: Orienting ecosystem instances

Orienting eco instances wasnt trivial (in v7, I dont know if things changed). I developed some techniques and metanode for orienting instances along a vector or in an arc, looking to the centre or a tangent or any other angle.  Maybe it can help you...

"I paint that which comes from the imagination or from dreams, or from an unconscious drive. I photograph the things that I do not wish to paint, the things which already have an existence."
Man Ray, modernist painter
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