Monday, September 24, 2007

Update

The Plugin has been updated. So this is version 0.51. Don't forget you need java 1.5.
So what was done?
  1. Fixed a bug in the bake file saving code. Now you shouldn't get "stuck" as was happening before.
  2. Found and fixed 2 bugs in the simulation code. It now should be more accurate. Note that in the advanced options you can select a single pass simulation mode. It might be faster, it will certainly be less accurate and may need smaller time steps.
  3. Implemented a direct gradient finder for the ray tracer.
  4. Provided a good default for max gradient. This makes ray tracing much faster. You might get some rendering artifacts however. Just increase the max density adjustment under the views and previews panel. Thanks goes to Peter for implementing this suggestion so quickly.
  5. Fixed a another bug in the bake file saving where the y velocity component was getting placed on both the y and z axis. This would cause rebakes to be totally incorrect.
  6. The coordinate system is now world coordinates, not the physics plugin local coordinates. This will change the direction gravity acts. Default is the -z direction.
  7. Moving between frames with a lot of particles was very slow. This has been somewhat fixed and should be a lot faster now.
So because of these bugs you should update ASAP. Here are some results from the debug process when its all pear shaped.

Simulate

Render. Problem!

Now it works and only 12 mins to render.


Don't forget with these render times that I have a AMD X2 5000 and use java 1.6 (about 1.5x faster than 1.5). The simulation time was under 10 mins, but i don't remember exactly how long it was. Also the simulation code is single threaded at this time.

And almost forgot. The Plugin is in the same place. Here

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow - that was a fast update!
Regarding speed between Java 1.5 and 1.6 I figured out (some time ago) that it speeds up rendering at last about 20-25 percent:
http://freenet-homepage.de/vidiot/AOI/Fast-Java16.jpg

Thanks for the update on physiks plugin. My CPU will burn down the house...

Harald

Anonymous said...

Awesome stuff Bob!

One question: You say Peter has implemented some changes to speed up the render. Does this mean that those changes are only in 2.5.1beta, or are they in 2.5?

Cheers!
Nik

bob said...

Peter put the changes in the base 2.5 code. So you don't need the update. But I would use the update anyway since thats what I test agasint.

Oh and a new update is not far away. Unfortunately I got the flu...

Anonymous said...

Great work!

>>The coordinate system is now world coordinates, not the physics plugin local coordinates. This will change the direction gravity acts. Default is the -z direction.

Just curious - why have you gone for a default z direction when y seems the most obvious choice, i.e. y-axis is the vertical one in AoI ?

Julian

bob said...

because The original code assumed a z direction that was up.

The new version makes it the -y direction. But subversion has barfed, so one i fix that there should be a beta 0.6 out today.

bob said...

So I have a disk thats got corrupted. The beta 0.6 won't be until tomorrow (Backups at home). EU time

Anonymous said...

Very nice plugin. :)

Well, just wanted to give some positive feedback, meaning: "Good job!" I'm looking forward to upcoming versions. :]

Greetings,
TroY