In ICE, how would you generate an array like [1, 10, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000, …] without using a Repeat node ?
It might help to look at it this way:
1 10 100 1000 10000 100000
Once you recognize that you are looking at powers of 10, and recall that the basic Math nodes can handle arrays just as well as single values, the rest follows easily:
Update: oops, it looks like my script below works only in simple cases where you just one actor proxy. The ActorID seems to be a constant (perhaps unused???) and it looks like you have to take the point ID and then look up the corresponding entry in the CrowdFX_Actor_Indices array.
If you need to get info like the actor ID, the X and Z positions, and the animation frame from CrowdFX, you can get it from the Simulation Cloud.
In the screenshot below, I used three Attribute Display properties to display the following:
Here’s a little Python snippet that logs a comma-separated string that contains the Actor ID, X, and Z positions, PoseID, and CurrentFrameInPose.
Note the use of the logf function from the sipyutils.
#
# SOFTIMAGE 2013
#
from sipyutils import si # win32com.client.Dispatch('XSI.Application')
from sipyutils import siut # win32com.client.Dispatch('XSI.Utils')
from sipyutils import siui # win32com.client.Dispatch('XSI.UIToolkit')
from sipyutils import simath # win32com.client.Dispatch('XSI.Math')
from sipyutils import log # LogMessage
from sipyutils import disp # win32com.client.Dispatch
from sipyutils import C # win32com.client.constants
from sipyutils import logf
si = si()
pc = si.Dictionary.GetObject( "Crowd.Point_Cloud" ).ActivePrimitive
aPtPos = pc.ICEAttributes("PointPosition")
log( len(aPtPos.DataArray) )
pos = pc.ICEAttributes("PointPosition").DataArray
ids = pc.ICEAttributes("CrowdFX_Actor_ID").DataArray
poses = pc.ICEAttributes("CrowdFX_PoseState_ID").DataArray
frames = pc.ICEAttributes("CrowdFX_Actor_CurrentFrameInCycle").DataArray2D
# ID, X, Y, Z, PoseState, CurrentFrameInCycle
for i in range( len(pos) ):
logf( "%d, %f, %f, %d, %d", ids[i], pos[i].X, pos[i].Z, poses[i], frames[i][poses[i]] )
The output of this script for frame 126 of the CrowdFX_FooFighters sample scene looks like this:
# INFO : 0, -100.000000, 0.000000, 8.531111, 2, 154 # INFO : 0, -85.714279, 0.000000, 6.684280, 1, 111 # INFO : 0, -71.428574, 0.000000, 7.442898, 2, 131 # INFO : 0, -57.142853, 0.000000, -2.251395, 2, 132 # INFO : 0, -42.857143, 0.000000, 11.363565, 2, 97 # INFO : 0, -28.571426, 0.000000, 7.302890, 2, 149 # INFO : 0, -14.285706, 0.000000, 13.759472, 5, 217 # INFO : 0, 0.000000, 0.000000, 11.584186, 5, 186 # INFO : 0, 14.285721, 0.000000, 9.853815, 3, 167 # INFO : 0, 28.571442, 0.000000, 8.366404, 2, 141 # INFO : 0, 42.857147, 0.000000, 21.238329, 5, 163 # INFO : 0, 57.142868, 0.000000, 6.831881, 5, 222 # INFO : 0, 71.428589, 0.000000, -2.667232, 2, 201 # INFO : 0, 85.714294, 0.000000, 16.321472, 3, 236 # INFO : 0, 100.000000, 0.000000, 10.077105, 2, 93 # INFO : 0, -100.000000, 0.000000, -10.505310, 2, 154 # INFO : 0, -85.714279, 0.000000, -17.066412, 1, 83 # INFO : 0, -71.428574, 0.000000, -11.711117, 5, 152 # INFO : 0, -57.142853, 0.000000, -22.719725, 2, 142 # INFO : 0, -42.857143, 0.000000, -7.311695, 5, 127 # INFO : 0, -28.571426, 0.000000, -11.755372, 2, 151 # INFO : 0, -14.285706, 0.000000, -3.648053, 5, 191 # INFO : 0, 0.000000, 0.000000, -6.797891, 5, 177 # INFO : 0, 14.285721, 0.000000, -8.881895, 5, 101 # INFO : 0, 28.571442, 0.000000, -10.384384, 5, 158 # INFO : 0, 42.857147, 0.000000, 4.351840, 5, 166 # INFO : 0, 57.142868, 0.000000, -11.661755, 2, 178 # INFO : 0, 71.428589, 0.000000, -22.718691, 2, 171 # INFO : 0, 85.714294, 0.000000, -1.260182, 5, 127 # INFO : 0, 100.000000, 0.000000, -8.947992, 5, 123
The Foo Fighter pose state IDs are set here (there are actually eight Action Sources in the ActorProxy property, but not all of them are used).
BTW, is it just me, or do the Attribute Display properties not work with the sample CrowdFX scenes? I was using the Foo Fighters sample at first, but I wasn’t able to show any attribute values, which made it a little harder to figure out what info was where.
Chris Gardner explains how to use an ICE attribute to control instancing when you send a Softimage ICE simulation over to Maya.
Some related discussions from the Softimage mailing list:
Last month, Guillaume Laforge posted a Random Extrusion compound that can extrude polygons with random lengths and insets.
Guillaume noted that this compound was for Softimage 2013 only, but it appears that [with a tweak] you can get it to work in 2012 SAP.
When you import the compound into 2012, you’ll see a warning in the status bar/script history:
// WARNING : 3000-EDIT-AddICECompoundNode - Could not find node : BuildArrayFromSetNode
All you have to do is put back the missing Build Array from Set node, then the compound appears to work in 2012 SAP.
A round-up of some of the Softimage videos posted this past week.
emTools 1.33 – Walk Through New Stuff
ICE Node for reading images at given UV coordinates
compositing images in ICE!
Manipulating colour in images
Psyop Softimage ICE Workshops
ICE-Rope-Rig (with Dynamic Controler Count and nice SubdivisionInterpolation)
Secondary deformations in Ice
http://vimeo.com/45047412
Maxscript Modifiers VS Softimage Ice
Softimage – A guide to better reflections
I missed this one for yesterday’s screenshots of the week.
Select Case doesn’t want to clone points. Suppose you have a set up like this:
If you plug Clone Point nodes into two consecutive Case ports, the first Clone Point only is executed.
If you plug something else into a Case port, between two Clone Points, then both Clone Points work:
But unfortunately I couldn’t trick ICE by multiplying the shapeID by 2. When I did that, ICE went back to evaluating the first Clone Point only.
To avoid having too many exposed reference ports in a compound, you can use a Get Data as a kind of passthrough node:
In this example, the name of an attribute is passed through:
Randomize Value by Range doesn’t quite work with integers. Consider what happens when you try get a random integer between 0 and 7.
Randomize Value by Range was not designed to work with integers. By forcing it to integer type, you end up with a Random Value node that has a mean of 3 and a variance of 4 (hence the -1, which is the result of 3 – 4).
A Random Value node with a mean of 4 and a variance of 3.5 would give you an integer between 0 and 7 (because when you force the random value into an integer, ICE truncates the scalar, so 7.5 would be 7, 0.5 would be 0).
A better way may be to use Floor on the scalar output of Random Value. I know some users have done their own Randomize Integer by Range compounds.
eX-SI 