And my question is about the velocity channel inside realflow.
In Realflow i can set my Min range ( blue ) and Max range ( white ) and of course, give values for them too.
So that inside the viewport it looks like this
So now to my question.
How can i use the velocity channel ( velocity of the gridparticles) to render that out in Krakatoa.
Do i need to use Magmaflow for this?
Really think that is a bit complicated but would love to use that information out of realflow
inside Krakatoa.
Another question regarding Frost.
I would love to use Frost in order to mesh my particles.
Really hate the mesher inside Realflow.
Would there also be an option to shade the Frost mesh by combining the velocity?
Would be awesome to do that.
Yes, you need MagmaFlow for this, but it is relatively simple
*Add a Krakatoa Channels Modifier to your PRT Loader.
*Select the Input Channel node and change it from Color to Velocity.
*With the Input Channel selected, hit the V key (for Vector) and then the M key (for Magnitude) - now you have a Magnitude node between the Velocity input and the Color output.
*With the Magnitude node selected, hit the F key (for Function) and then B (for Blend) - now you have a Blend operator behind the Magnitude. Press Ctrl+W to swap the first and second sockets and then SHIFT+Ctrl+W to swap the second and third sockets - now the Magnitude goes into the 3rd socket.
*With the Blend node selected, hit SHIFT+3 to create a blue color Vector Input and then SHIFT+7 to create a white color Vector Input, both connected to the first resp. the second sockets of Blend.
*Since the Magnitude of the Velocity will be higher than 1.0 most of the time but you want it to be in the range from 0.0 to 1.0 to blend the two colors, select the Magnitude node again and hit the / key on the numeric keypad to add a Divide operator.
*With the Divide node selected, press Ctrl+1 to create a Float Input node. Enter the Max. Velocity in it, say, 10.
With the current setup, velocity magnitude of 0 units will produce blue color, velocity magnitude of 10 and higher will be white, velocities between the two will be a blend of the two colors. You can introduce a min. value too - just Subtract the Min. value from both the Magnitude and the Max. value. And it is also a good idea to Clamp the value between exactly 0.0 and 1.0 to avoid any color spill over later on when it goes into Frost…
Here is what it would look like:
If you use Frost with the PRT Loader that has these colors calculated, the Vertex Color channel of the resulting mesh will contain the colors automatically. Add a Vertex Color Map to the Diffuse color slot of the material assigned to Frost and you will get the colors rendering.
A video tutorial related to this is planned for the near future, so stay tuned.
is their anything i have to think about when trying to render the mesh with frost?
As you have explained, i have added an Vertex Color Map to my diffuse slot.
But the mesh is not blending the color. It’s either light blue or dark blue, but i can’t see
the blending from white ( fast velocity ) to blue.
hi naik,
i would rather suggest to use the vorticity channel from Realflow instead of the velocity. Be sure to activate the Vorticity in Realflow before you simulate your shot, but there is also an option to recalculate it for already simulated particles. Have a look on my animation - i used the color by vorticity kcm, dicussed a couple times in this forum, or just google it and you get plenty of info and tutorials about that
looks awesome! Nice ani.
So is there any reason why you use the vorticity and not the velocity.
Of course i know that difference in the meaning. But maybe there is something
else i don’t know
Is it right that you took the same PRT / Bin file for the Krakatoa pass
and just ramped the colors from black ( small / low vorticity ) to white ( heavy vorticity) ?
As i have posted my question, would it also be possible to use shaders / materials instead of just colors?
Would be cool to try it out, if it is possible.
I just find the starting point with the magmaflow extremly heavy, looks very technical from the
artist point of view
thank,
the color by vorticity Setup immitates more the real foam behavior - it only gets white when it quickly changes its initial movement. The Velocity Setup doesn´t differenciate between constantly fast moving particles and ones which change their initial movement…
yes, i loaded the simed bin from Realflow into PRT Loader and applied the “Color by Vorticity” KCM. It “only” ramps between black and white, but gives me everything i need
unfortunately, there is no way to get around the magma flow, when you like to bild complex stuff you need to stick your head in. The online help is the best starting point to understand
First of all, I agree that MagmaFlow 1.x is a bit more complicated than it should be (UI-wise), but mostly because people don’t know how to use it. If they would follow the available tutorials and know a bit of scripting or programming, it is very easy and very fast to use. I feel that Magma 2 is much easier to use, but it doesn’t make things easier to program - it still requires some experience with similar node-based systems like, say, Fusion, Nuke, PFlow Box #3 or Softimage ICE. All these systems share similar concepts. But the underlying logic is rather simple: Get some channels and some values in, multiply/add/divide them and output as new channels. And it requires some MAX knowledge, too. For example you must know that in order to show a Vertex Color channel in the Viewport, you have to change the Object Properties dialog to Shade with it. This is shown in the very first Introductory tutorial of Frost, so it is not my fault if people don’t RTFineM. See the bottom of this page - I am not even using MagmaFlow there, just pure PFlow: thinkboxsoftware.com/frost-first-steps/
You CAN blend materials using the results of the MagmaFlow output. This has been shown several times in threads around here, last time 12 hours ago.
The basic idea is this: Set the Output of the MagmaFlow to any Mapping Channel you like. Output Black for the low values and White for the high values. Assign a BLEND material to the Frost and set the 3rd slot to a Vertex Color Map that reads the same Mapping channel (Max has 99 more of those, so you have a lot of options) that the MagmaFlow generated. Now you suddenly have two different materials blending based on the Velocity or Vorticity channel used in the MagmaFlow. But you can go even farther if you want to mix 3, 4 or more materials - you could set the Red, Green and Blue channels of a Mapping Channel to different values, and access these channels via the Vertex Color Map individually in nested Blend Materials (Blend in a Blend in a Blend) to get even more complex shading effects. This gives you 300 possible channels (100 channels * 3 RGB components) to control with…
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See the bottom of this page - I am not even using MagmaFlow there, just pure PFlow: