Point Cache and ICE not happy in Simulated mode - help!!

[Sandy Sutherland]

Hi All,

I have an ICE tree that helps pull wayward feathers from our feather system back towards the body mesh - works fine, except I was using it as a 2 ICE tree setup, the first non sim ICE tree was to set the closest location and distance away from the body of the point on feather - then the sim ICE tree was to use these 2 things to pull the points towards the body mesh!!  Worked great - right up untill I needed to use MDD point caches to drive the body and the feathers!  The simulated ICE tree stops the point cache being updated - so as soon as my bird flies away - he leaves his feathers behind - UNLESS I delete the post simulation area under the feather node - then it works - BUT it then stops calculating the 2 variables I need on the first frame and does them every frame - so then my feathers pop to a new area if say the wings get close to the body!!!

Sooo - I am trying to rebuild this by using an if node to write the data at frame 0 - then if any other frame, read the data and write it back!! - i.e.



but this does not work - the data after 0 is not read as from the previous frame - probably something very simple I need to do!!  If anyone has any idea, please let me know!!

Thanks

Sandy

[Grahame Fuller]

You absolutely need a simulation if you want data to be persisted from frame to frame. Otherwise the stack is always evaluated from the bottom up, so if you test for frame 0 before setting those attributes then you will get correct values on that frame and default values on every other frame.

Have you tried moving the PO_XSI_Reader node up into the Simulation region under the ICE tree?

gray

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Sandy Sutherland
Sent: Wednesday, July 14, 2010 03:19 AM
To: XSI List
Subject: Point Cache and ICE not happy in Simulated mode - help!!

Hi All,

I have an ICE tree that helps pull wayward feathers from our feather system back towards the body mesh - works fine, except I was using it as a 2 ICE tree setup, the first non sim ICE tree was to set the closest location and distance away from the body of the point on feather - then the sim ICE tree was to use these 2 things to pull the points towards the body mesh!! Worked great - right up untill I needed to use MDD point caches to drive the body and the feathers! The simulated ICE tree stops the point cache being updated - so as soon as my bird flies away - he leaves his feathers behind - UNLESS I delete the post simulation area under the feather node - then it works - BUT it then stops calculating the 2 variables I need on the first frame and does them every frame - so then my feathers pop to a new area if say the wings get close to the body!!!

Sooo - I am trying to rebuild this by using an if node to write the data at frame 0 - then if any other frame, read the data and write it back!! - i.e.

[cid:image0...@01CB2349.37BB7D10]

[Sandy Sutherland]

Hi Gray - thanks for the reply - did not think of that - but did find
another work around - I did the basic point cache, then pulled in the
point cache scene with feathers, then wrote out an Ice Cache for the
feathers, leaving the PO ops on - I added the Ice Cache into the
simulated Ice Tree! Works - but is a 2 step process!!

thanks again

sandy

[David Rivera]

Could you post a quick video sample, please? Looks like something that was really difficult
has come to a happy ending.

Thanks.
Bests.
David.

---

From: Sandy Sutherland <sa...@triggerfish.co.za>
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Sent: Thu, July 15, 2010 12:30:56 AM
Subject: Re: Point Cache and ICE not happy in Simulated mode - help!!