Category Archives: ICE

Finding point clouds

Posted on by
Reply

Point clouds are a type of X3DObject, so you can use FindChild and FindChildren to find point clouds.

BUT watch out, the SDK docs list the wrong type constant: siCloudPrimType.
That type was for the old, obsolete particle system.
For ICE point clouds, use the constant siPointCloudPrimType (“PointCloud”).

from win32com.client import constants as c

PointClouds = Application.ActiveSceneRoot.FindChildren2("*", c.siPointCloudPrimType ) 
for pointCloud in PointClouds :
    Application.LogMessage(pointCloud.FullName )

Using ICE color attributes to render instance geometry

Posted on by
Reply

This issue came across my desk several times recently:

I have a point cloud of instanced geometry, and I do a Color Attribute lookup in my point cloud material.
But the colors don’t show up in the render.

When you use instance geometry, you have to use the Color Attribute node in the material applied to the instance geometry, not the material applied to the point cloud.

Using Exclude Particles in the Particle Density shader

Posted on by
Reply

The Particle Density shader has a Visible in render boolean that can control visibility on a per-particle basis.

So how do you apply this setting on a per-particle basis? One way to access individual particles would be to use an attribute shader to look up a per-particle attribute, and then use that to set the Visible in render value. For example, I used a Color Attribute shader to get the particle color, plugged that into a Color Math Logic, and plugged that into the Visible in render port of the Particle Density shader. In the screenshots below, I’m simply testing whether the particle color is blue.

A Syflex on ICE snippet

Posted on by
Reply

During his Softimage 2012 demo at GDC, Mark Schoennagel has an amusing [to me at least] little bit where he uses Syflex to inflate and deflate a model. I recreated the effect but not the funny balloon noises that Mark makes while the doggie inflates and deflates.

The Syflex setup is pretty simple: I just pinned the tail and added a volume force.

ICE: the universal production tool

Posted on by
3

There’s an interesting
thread on the mailing list about the [many] different uses of ICE in production:

ICE – The Universal Swiss Army Knife For Production
“I turned to my office mate and asked, “Did I mention today yet how much I love ICE?” and he replied “not yet, but it seems to be a daily thing with you.” So it got me to thinking, it might be fun (and useful) to start up a thread about the 1001 daily production uses for ICE technology that nobody thought about when it was being designed.”
– Brad Gabe