creating point sprites...

Are there any other ways of creating point sprites aside from the Particle SOP? What I think I’d really like is a way to tell the Particle SOP to emit a single particle on command… but I can’t figure out a way to do that.
Thanks,
Michael

Unfortunately there currently there isn’t. What you may want to do is create some number of point sprite particles and just lock the Particle SOP. Then use Delete SOP/Point SOP to manipulate/delete the points that you actually need at any given time.

What about using the DAT to SOP? I just can’t seem to get it to work correctly, but it would seem that I could place lines in a DAT and have them appear as points…

Am I misunderstanding how to the DATto SOP works? I can certainly use it to create geometry, but points don’t seem to be working correctly… is it broken or is that not really what it’s supposed to do?
Thanks,
Michael

I don’t think a DAT To SOP can create a point sprites.

A point in SOPs is just a piece of data (position, normal, texture coordinates). A point is used by combination of vertex/primitives to create rendereable geometry. But on it’s own a point doesn’t get rendered. It gets used by a primitive, as a vertex.

Right, but I can use a point sprite MAT to render a point sprite at a point… I was attempting to use the DAT to SOP to create those points… I specified a “Points DAT” and build of “Use Primitive DAT,” which doesn’t seem to do anything at all. Connect all points, however, does seem to work to create geometry, but that’s not what I’m attempting to do…

Unfortunately that’s not how the MAT works. Its doesn’t render points as point sprites, it manipulates point sprite primitives, which can only be created with the Particle SOP right now. I do apologize for the lack of usability of point sprites. Let me see about adding support for them into the DAT To SOP, as that seems like the quickest route to success for this.

what about the sprite SOP? I can’t really get it to work properly though

Adding this feature to the DAT To SOP is very high on my to do list now.

Build 7300 or later will have the ability to create a particle system (and specify them to Render as Point Sprites) in the DAT to SOP.

I can’t wait! Could change my whole Touch world… I’m still a bit addicted to point sprites!

Has anyone yet tried the DAT to SOP feature to create point sprites?

I’ve tried… I can’t seem to get it to work. I have a table with 3 columns representing x,y and z. I’ve hooked it into my Dat to SOP and set it to render as a particle system. Do I need to do anything else for this to work?
Thanks,
Michael

Nevermind, I was forgetting to put the P(0), P(1), P(2) in my DAT. It works great! Very cool. Thanks.
-michael

I took a look at the DAT to SOP particle/point sprite feature. It is definitely a useful start for a number of things. Point sprites seem to work fine, though now I am wondering how to manipulate parameters/colors/textures at the individual particles quickly!

A possible next step: Is it possible to have another operator or mode in the particle SOP that would then allow you to set this set of particles in motion? It seems like there have a been a few requests before about having particle like behavior but with a fixed number of points. Is there another way that forces and limits can be applied to these DAT to SOP created particles?

Hey archo-p, if you set the Particle SOP to Modify Source Geometry, the points in the geometry will be used and behave like particles. The number of particles is static in this mode, no birth or death or particles.

example .toe anyone?

:slight_smile: Rod.

Ben,
Thanks! That is exactly what I was meaning. Very useful.

Rod and everyone,
I just put this one together to try it out. Seems to work just fine! Please augment and repost if there are other useful things you can see to do with this. I haven’t really delved into tweaking of particle system forces, so it doesn’t do anything particularly cool or identifiable.

Cheers
P
101022 archop particles 001.tox (5.4 KB)

Hey thanks. somehow I missed the ‘modify source geometry’ thing in the particle SOP.

I have previously just made a heap of springs to behave like particles without any births and deaths. On the up-side, I can have really individual control of mass and drag etc.

I’ll play with this a lot.

by the way, particles and metaballs and springs don’t seem to crash touch as often as they used to. maybe it’s just th enew computer …

It’d be nice to have them overhauled a bit - altohugh I guess Derivative folks are aiming at getting SOPs onto the GPU pretty soon ja?

Rod.