Real particle trails

Having just seen milo’s particle prettiness at
http://www.vimeo.com/1248385
I’m quite jealous because I’ve been grappling with the challenge of trying to draw proper (line or mesh) trails behind moving particles for a while trying various approaches and gave up deciding it was beyond me. I would post the patches I made on the way but to be honest they are complete garbage. I was trying to do it using queues and the line node but realised that doesn’t work because it just draws lines between all the points it’s given, without any way of splitting into the respective particle that it’s from. Then I tried doing it as a mesh but that’s a bit beyond me.

I’m not expecting anyone just to give their hard work but some idea of the method I should be using would really help…thanks…

I was trying to do it using queues and the line node but realised
that doesn’t work because it just draws lines between all the
points it’s given

Ehh… I think you missed our good friends SwapDim and Binsize for this one ;)

Also, Tonfilm made a cool Motion Blur patch wich can help you.

.I would post the patches I made on the way but to be honest
they are complete garbage.

Even trash can learn us something, don’t be shy :)

QueueLine.v4p (17.6 kB)

thanks … now i really know what SwapDim does

fancy patch West!

wow…west you are a genius. many thanks. And finally I found out what binsize was used for! That was another one that I never quite got. And in this case would’ve made all the difference. But yeah I never thought of swapdim either.

swapdim - thats the way. i used a kind of verlet integration instead of a queue. because otherwise the trail will disapear if the particles don´t move. and i did the the trails with a rope - its just 2D but you can put a texture on it. so i did a texture transform on the trails (the “pumping” lights appear on position change)

hi milo, can you tell us more about verlet integration? this is so confusing for me

sebl I’d never heard of it either but went trawling round and found this which explains it a bit more simply:

http://www.gamasutra.com/resource_guide/20030121/jacobson_01.shtml

in easiest way, a verlet integration does something like a “chain” (as used in this video) in complex its for cloth dynamics, bones, kinetics, etc… there was also a discussion and a module at the forum:

verlet

woohoo! thanks again

i simply extended verlet (2d Spreads) to verlet (3d Spreads)…

here it is:
Verlet (3d Spreads)_fixed.rar (7.34 Kb)