continued_at_new_forum The Wingnut Chronicles

[Wingnut]

nod, thx dk.

I put some fire proc-texture on the fake volume cones...  take a look as wanted, gang.  It's interesting. (maybe)    The stage lights show that the tavern is rather smokey tonight.

It appears... that maybe... fireTexture.shift is not working.  Early indicators tell me that something is wrong there, but the wrongness sure could be me.    I didn't have any success with adjusting it.  Experiment at will.

I SO wanted a silhouette of E.T. and boy/bicycle... flying past the spotlight "moons", but I couldn't find the proper animation.  So, we have to settle for a little car. 

Why 4 different fire textures, you ask?  I was hoping for no smoke/haze pattern-repeating... light-to-light.  But, the patterns still look similar, especially light 1 and 2.  Their "smoke" seems nearly identical.  Same seeds, I suppose... maybe.

[Wingnut]

Oh, I see the problem with fire shift.  https://github.com/BabylonJS/Babylon.js/blob/master/Babylon/Shaders/fire.fragment.fx

Shader wants a float for .shift.

http://babylondoc.azurewebsites.net/page.php?p=22601

Documentation says a vector2.

So I turned-on all my .shift lines (136, 154, 172, 191), set them = 0, and no change in shifting seen.  hmm. 

I think I've been here (with these problems) before and have already reported these situations to our procedural texture guru.

[Vousk-prod.]

Great. I find it pretty nice with those fire textures, it starts to be convincing. Love the idea of using procedurals.

Maybe an other mapping projection could be used to avoid the problem at the bottom.

[Wingnut]

@vp - "Problem at the bottom"?  The seam in the texture?  *nod*  In the next gen of computers, there will be hardware seam removal code.  yay!  (you wish, wingy). 

On a different subject, I have started hacking the BJS ParticleSystem for a special project... which I call "star dome".  I am going to make a system that creates a sky dome and/or scene-sphere... of particles... as basic stars.  (without using a skybox)

Particles work great for this task... because of the unique and highly-efficient way that our particle system uses VBO's.  Did you know that ALL particles in a single particleSystem... are defined in a single VBO?  In other words, all particles are part of a single mesh (in a way).  This method, totally rocks!  It is the ONLY way to do a sky full of particle stars... and not be FPS-heavy.

And, our "sparkle" methods will work fine with this system... so we have star twinkle abilities.  Yay!

In the act of shutting-off the particle animation updating, and hacking the .startPositionFunction, I came across a strange phenomenon - particles emitting from 8 emitters at once, with a single particleSystem!  WOW!

http://www.babylonjs-playground.com/#WQBB3#3

Party on!

[Stephen Andrews]

Looks nice Wingnut, but the links do not appear to be working.

[Wingnut]

Hi again.  Hey look, I got my first Star Dome working!  yay!  (Actually, it's a star 'sphere'). 

Mousewheel back a few km's to see the global picture.    2000 quads, and this SOB is still smokin'-fast!

There is some odd star-clustering that I'd like to eliminate. 

Two stolen functions (lines 46 - 61) do much of the plotting work, and they get called by my custom .startPositionFunction in lines 11-16. 

getCart is short for getCartesian, by the way. 

I'll check/verify those links, Stephen, and it's good to hear from you again.  Thanks for all the "likes" you've been giving me. 

Forum... any ideas for de-clustering the stars (happening in 2 places)... would be MOST appreciated.  They don't appear to be "polar" clusters.  They appear to be "equatorial" - along the equator.  Interesting.

Stephen, I show those links working ok.  Deltakosh always tells me to clear my browser cache and try again, when I get failed PG demos.  What are you getting, Stephen?  Is it going to a default playground scene?  Just plain 404'ing?  *scratch scratch*   Be well, gang.

[Vousk-prod.]

Wouaaa, that's really nice !

Maybe you could use a better particle texture for the stars..., cause this one is mostly... erm... not really a star

Try something like the one used by DK here for instance.

[Wingnut]

Here's one with a better star texture...

http://playground.babylonjs.com/#MYY6S

We knew THIS was going to happen.  We just KNEW it.  hehe.  Ahhh... god sparticles. 

Maybe the godrays is just a little too much, huh?

Just the sparticles...  http://playground.babylonjs.com/#MYY6S#1

How about some drama?  "We're approaching the star, sir.  I suggest braking thrusters."

http://playground.babylonjs.com/#MYY6S#2  

[Stephen Andrews]

You and your sparticles. x]

This looks amazing though, disco ball time?!

The links were timing out, turned out to be a DNS lookup issue, fixed it by switching DNS servers.

[Vousk-prod.]

Excellent !!

I found it more beautifull when blinking has stopped ! (Maybe with a far lower "blinking speed" it would be great)

It's interesting in many ways, I think we could add this one to particles doc and VolumetricLightScattering doc as new examples.

 

Your drama scene makes me think of a new challenge for you: the sun (you know, a beautiful giga orange-reddish sphere, emitting light, with sunspots and coronal mass
ejections!). That would be a nice and tough challenge, uh...

[Wingnut]

Hi!  Yeah, all the demos so far... are in ridiculous mode.    To make a proper star-sphere, the sparkles need to be tamed, as you suggested.  Occasional twinkles, maybe a shooting star, sometimes, etc.  We're in version 0.1 alpha.

 

What first gave me the idea... was a lack of scene.clearTexture.  And with textures... seams (blech). 

 

Plus, the background on a BJS scene... is not a mesh, as we all know.  The background color (clearColor) seems to be something at the GL layer, and I don't think much can be done to it (besides color change), even with a shader.  But, I'm speculating, and that's when I'm most-often wrong. 

 

The sun might be quite easy.  A sphere, with god-rayed fire texture, and some low godrays.exposure settings.  That should make a convincing sun.  We won't see any "ejections" dancing above the sphere's surface, but it still should look ok.  It will have a texture seam, though. 

 

Darned seams.  Who does the sewing 'round here? 

 

VP, it's about time that YOU tried a playground or two, eh?  I bet you're an fine modeler and coder.  You have shown excellent taste and good horse-logic in your suggestions.  And you notice details quite well.  If you aren't currently doing scenes, I think you should.  I bet you're good at it.  Thanks for the replies, gang.  Party on!

 

PS:  Upper Michigan USA is going above freezing this weekend, and next week!  We get to climb-out from under the hay stacks!  yay!

[Vousk-prod.]

A scene.clearTexture (= clearColor but with an image) may be usefull, particularly for 2D sprites games, but since we're in a HTML page, you can also play directly with the background (of the page or the canvas) via CSS.

 

Wingnut, yep, maybe I'd be able to do some funny PG experiments, but enough time spending at coding at work , in my spare time I prefer experimenting with other forms of Art (yes, coding is Art! ), for instance playing music, or doing this kind of stuff (warning! off-topic mode )

[Temechon]

To put a background in Babs, you can do something like this : 

// Background layernew BABYLON.Layer("background","assets/background/sky.jpg", scene, true);

The last parameter should be set to 'true' if the image is in background.

[Vousk-prod.]

Excellent !! Didn't know that background layer stuff (I've never had a serious look at layer system yet)

[Wingnut]

Vousk... wow!  What a fantastic portfolio you have.  Unreal, literally.  You're a friggin' Aardman-grade animator... easily.  Mighty fine cartoonist, too.  And musician?  Phew. 

 

I watched every video... many twice.  Niiiiice.  Damn.  Oh, that stop-action and clay stuff... that takes so so so much patience... I don't see how you do it.  *sigh*  *droooool*

 

Thanks for showing that to me, VP.  Very nice.  Scary nice.

[Wingnut]

Hey Temechon.... thanks for the information about Layers.

 

I had to try a few, of course.  Here's a drunken panorama-like thing.

 

There seems to be a limit to the width of a panorama image... for layer backgrounds.  Many CORS-cleared panoramas... failed.  Maybe too much image width.  When I used a not-so-wide panorama image, it all worked nicely.

 

In a similar demo, I tried using a non-panorama (stars) layer-texture as a godrays radiator texture... but that didn't work. I might have something wrong.  It's a demented idea, anyway.    Feel free to experiment with that. All the tools are in this demo. 

 

And yes, you do indeed see a layer.texture.uOffset = camera.alpha; in the animation loop. 

 

Magic like that... is why I get the BIG BUCKS.    (Wingy hocks-up a loogie and tries to spit like a real man, but it lands in his beard and grosses-out everyone.)

[Vousk-prod.]

Vousk... wow!  What a fantastic portfolio you have.  Unreal, literally.  You're a friggin' Aardman-grade animator... easily.  Mighty fine cartoonist, too.  And musician?  Phew. 

I watched every video... many twice.  Niiiiice.  Damn.  Oh, that stop-action and clay stuff... that takes so so so much patience... I don't see how you do it.  *sigh*  *droooool*

Thanks for showing that to me, VP.  Very nice.  Scary nice.

 

Many many thanks Wingnut!!!!!

Glad and happy you like it! I'm doing those stuff to make people having good time watching them, so if you enjoyed them I'm fully pleased.

 

Aardman-grade, hmm ? If only... I'd like to be such a talented animator but I'm far from those guys. But well, maybe one day, who knows, working in that kind of studio is one of my dreams anyway

 

Yes, it requires patience. But I'm approximately 3 to 7 fps, not 25 as real animation studios. In fact the longest part is not the animation one, it's all the preliminary setups and all the following video and sound editings. To animate things my trick is simply to mentaly take the character's place and slowing down my own inner time speed, then I live the scene inside myself and move the character at the same time, move a little, -shoot-, move, -shoot-, move, -shoot-, etc... hundreds and hundreds of times. That's so coooool!! :lol:

[jerome]

Fantastic work Vousk-Prod !

[Vousk-prod.]

@jerome: Thank you !

[Wingnut]

Hi kids!   There's a rumor that SIMD is circling the BabylonJS airport and requesting landing clearance.  Interesting... maybe. 

[GameMonetize]

I cannot comment on that

[Wingnut]

 

Hi again, gang.  Recently, I scraped-together a single document that contains all forum topics as-of March 13, 2015. 

 

I use it to help find topics with 0 replies... to see if I can somehow answer them, or at least follow-up on the issue.  Everyone is welcome to help with that, thanks.

 

Anyway, the big fat document is located here.  Use it, abuse it, but all in all... party on!

[Vousk-prod.]

What a nice idea!

[jerome]

https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/simd-javascript-faster-html5-apps

 

https://01.org/node/1495

 

and : https://github.com/BabylonJS/Babylon.js/blob/master/Babylon/Math/babylon.math.ts#L3417

 

(sa race velue !)

 

Any benchmark or with vs without SIMD BJS example avalaible ?

[Wingnut]

It's just a rumor, J.  I'm sure it was some malicious user who put "First support for SIMD.js" in various places at GitHub. 

 

We must not talk TOO much about this, because it might ruin the grandeur of a SIMD Grand Opening Celebration, should such a thing be planned.  Let's keep our new secret society... Knights of the Single Instruction  ...a true secret.  shhh. 

 

We probably shouldn't bother the implementers, and we should require that all secret society members promise to never drink and drive SIMD at the same time.  It could be a very fast motor which requires advanced javascript racing gear and safety considerations.  heh.  vrrrrooooom!

 

I heard that a Japanese researcher lost a hand when a SIMD-turbocharger on a webGL playground... exploded halfway down the RUN.  We gotta be careful.  At minimum, we should probably get a roll cage on our playground, and make sure its fire extinguisher is fully charged.  Maybe a kill switch... in case we get tossed from the playground cockpit, or black-out... due to the intense acceleration.