Various R&D's

[rsd]

Just shaping.

The shapes were simulated as a crowd, then a single actor were chosen at time.

No keyframe animation were used for particle manipulating. They were driven by additional attribute "passivity", so there is random delay for each particle, before they go to the goal.

Edited November 6, 2016 by rsd

[rsd]

Light shader

This light shader uses velocity from particles to generate wave pattern.

[rsd]

Point-based GI.

https://groundflyer.github.io/point-based-gi.html

There was a topic somewhere around named "pc cookbook" or something like that. This technique is similar to the ones described there.

[rsd]

Ripples as a shader.

https://groundflyer.github.io/point-based-ripple.html

Edited November 6, 2016 by rsd

[rsd]

Portals.

I put this shader off for a long time. It's originally from Renderman Stupid Tricks.

I implemented all features:
* sight teleportation
* lighting teleportation
* shadow teleportation
* transformation
* geometry (displace) teleportation

Though I can't get geometry teleportation work well: mesh have to be teared, but intermediate polygons are stretching between portals, even with redicing.

[mestela]

Amazing stuff all round!

 

[rsd]

Thanks, Matt.

 

Another point-based shaders: worley noise and voronoi diagram generated using particles.

 

 

 

[caskal]

Hello @rsd love your R&Ds! specially the voronoi glass one, I started learning mantra and want to try to achieve something similar, didnt know that points could be rendered, I did a quick test with a scattered sphere and a mantra shader builder with displacement but cant get the displacement to work, I also played with settings on the obj with no luck, can you share some tips to achieve deformations on points like that? 

Thanks!

[caskal]

Added an add sop with add particle system and seems to be working, but any advice will be more than welcome  love your fractal stuff

[rsd]

Hey @caskal.

The idea of worley noise is to use distance to the nth-closest point from randomly generated point cloud as a value. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worley_noise

To get controllable worley noise you need to pass your own point cloud to the shader. It can be done via Point Cloud Open: query a single point from the point cloud at current world position (the same space the point cloud saved in) and then compute distance to it.

Voronoi diagram is done by using an attribute from the queried point to color the current cell.