POP - Loot and Looters

[sanostol]

hi,

I'm trying to setup a popsystem that has particles that hunt and eat others. just for learning experience.

it is quite easy to setup the hunting in vop, but eating, i got stuck.

how can one particle modify the attribute of another, for example a looter gets close enough to his target to eat, how can I tell the target, die now/

I am thinking about the following:

two pop sims:

pro: easy seperation of the different particle types

two particle streams in one sim. probably the one that will work, but a vopnetwork gets quite messy for all this. first i have to check if the current point evaluated in the point cloud iteration is the same as the source point. the next, is it a loot or a looter. and finally my looter particle eats his target, how can I inform my target about this, so I can delete it from the sim ?

another question, can I reference a point cloud with point cloud open by itself?

interesting but confusing subject.

best reagards

Martin

Edited January 4, 2010 by sanostol

[~nature~]

hi,

I'm trying to setup a popsystem that has particles that hunt and eat others. just for learning experience.

it is quite easy to setup the hunting in vop, but eating, i got stuck.

how can one particle modify the attribute of another, for example a looter gets close enough to his target to eat, how can I tell the target, die now/

I am thinking about the following:

two pop sims:

pro: easy seperation of the different particle types

two particle streams in one sim. probably the one that will work, but a vopnetwork gets quite messy for all this. first i have to check if the current point evaluated in the point cloud iteration is the same as the source point. the next, is it a loot or a looter. and finally my looter particle eats his target, how can I inform my target about this, so I can delete it from the sim ?

another question, can I reference a point cloud with point cloud open by itself?

interesting but confusing subject.

best reagards

Martin

Hi,sanostol,it seems PC doesn't work if you reference within the same POP,but I guess you can use two POP networks instead of two particle streams in only one sim then manipulate in SOP and refer to the sopsolver for accumulation.

Edited January 4, 2010 by ~nature~

[sanostol]

mh, ok, just to be sure

I have to popsims, that I connect in a sopsolver, for accumulation, but does'nt that mean that the sopsovler for example deletes the eaten one, and I reference that for the looter simulation?

Does this also work when I want the bidirectional behavior of the two sims, for example the lool tries to flee the looters when they come close. I thought I would need to somehow reimport the modified particles back to the sim and right now I see no way to do this

Martin

[sanostol]

mh, ok, just to be sure

I have to popsims, that I connect in a sopsolver, for accumulation, but does'nt that mean that the sopsovler for example deletes the eaten one, and I reference that for the looter simulation?

Does this also work when I want the bidirectional behavior of the two sims, for example the lool tries to flee the looters when they come close. I thought I would need to somehow reimport the modified particles back to the sim and right now I see no way to do this

Martin

EDIT:

wisdom is coming slowly

Do You mean that I use a popsolver - sopsolver combination for this?

Edited January 4, 2010 by sanostol

[pclaes]

why are you using pops at all? You should be able to do it with vex and pointclouds in sops with a sopsolver.

I might have a look at this this evening.

[pclaes]

Have a look at the file. - but try doing it by yourself first, you'll probably learn more that way.

This file has got some cool tricks in it. Still lacks a couple of behaviors, but this should definitely get you going.

Using sopsolver, pointclouds and a bit of boids and massive principles, the rest is dealing with groups, triggers and a bit of beautification in the postprocess.

-- you could also do it with a popsolver... that way you get all the pops on top of all the sops as operators to work with.

add some more behaviors. The key is in blending between behaviors based upon: distance to enemy/distance to other boids/distance to an obstacle/desire to break free as a leader.

Also by using vops you can make better use of multithreading, this becomes obvious when dealing with a lot of points (scatter some more initial prey and predator points).

Have fun.

particle_fight_04.hip

[edward]

why are you using pops at all?

Because POPs is basically a SOP solver for point geometry?

[pclaes]

Because POPs is basically a SOP solver for point geometry?

To a degree this is true, but why should you limit yourself to pop operators when you can have all the sops on top of it?

Also pops doesn't work so well with pointclouds in vops inside pops at the moment (this has been submitted as an RFE). Because pops apparently sets up a set of rules without attaching geometry, also the internal flow inside a popnetwork is different, like when dealing with several sources and collecting them together.

-you get scrubbing in the timeline.

-you can make your own python sop and use it as if it was a pop - of course vex is better for speed.

[sanostol]

hey peter,

thanks a lot, first of all. I will go this way for now. it seems to be the more way more powerfull.

sopsolver was anyway on my list to discover more

cheers Martin

PS: I could not resist to peek into Your file , very good