Parametric Modeling

[PabloMack]

I just did a search on this website for "Parametric Modeling". It didn't have a single hit. This idea is very interesting to me. I suppose that for it to be an effective and efficient methodology, the models you use in your scenes need to be more sophisticated than just a static model such as an OBJ. They are models that have a number of parameters in them that you can manipulate. I can envision a model of a growing vine. One of the parameters will be "age". You could feed the frame number into this parameter and make it grow during the render. This kind of thing might be better controlled by a number of parameters. The idea is that the model would have to be built during render time instead of being built before. I have a friend that is using plugins called Railclone and "Forest Pack" for 3DS Max. This sort of thing would be wonderful to use with XFrog and TG. I know that XFrog is somewhat parametric but I don't think it can create models defined by parameters during render time under the control of parameters that one might configure in the node system of TG. It would be nice if you could use TG's node system to pump values into these parameters during a render. There may be a lot more to the TG+XFrog combination than I am aware of. But if all Forest Pack can do is to scatter static models then TG can already do that and more. Any comments?

http://www.itoosoft.com/forestpack.php
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVvwXL84q5s

[Oshyan]

As far as I understand Xfrog is pretty fully parametric in terms of their actual modeling software and their .xfr procedural format. If we can get them to create a plugin for Terragen to load and dynamically generate model variations at render time, that would be awesome. Go tell 'em! http://xfrog.com/


- Oshyan

[inkydigit]

not sure if this helps, but I love using it:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/mathmod/
or another that I love:
https://www.viz.tamu.edu/faculty/ergun/research/topology/download.html

[PabloMack]

Go tell 'em! http://xfrog.com/

I just did. I saw others requesting "XFrog for Vue" and "XFrog for" various other software products. Since XFrog can be
purchased bundled with Terragen (its the way I bought it), I would think that those guys would weigh my request a
little heavier than if I were requesting support for many other packages. I am presuming that you can do the sort of parametric
modeling during render time in "XFrog for C4D" that I have been talking about. This video is a tutorial on how to grow a
tree. I am presuming that the plugin is using C4D to do the rendering while the plugin is controlling the geometry of
the model:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb-S9ojZELE

Am I on-track or am I going off into the weeds here? Feedback?

[TheBadger]

As far as I understand Xfrog is pretty fully parametric in terms of their actual modeling software and their .xfr procedural format. If we can get them to create a plugin for Terragen to load and dynamically generate model variations at render time, that would be awesome. Go tell 'em! http://xfrog.com/


- Oshyan

Is that something they can and want to do but are just waiting for interest on, oshyan?
Long have we all wished for easy animation of plants here.

[PabloMack]

Is that something they can and want to do but are just waiting for interest on, oshyan? Long have we all wished for easy animation of plants here.

Parametric modeling would give you control over the form and geometry of plants but not their movement as I understand it. It is part of modeling and not animation. Planetside would not need XFrog's help in just animating plants as you would animals. That is to say swaying in the wind, stretching and bending around. The model itself does not change, just the positioning of its parts. Parametric modeling would allow you to change the model itself as in the number of branches, the frequency of branches, the growth (i.e. presence) and ripeness of flowers and fruits etc. But it takes XFrog software to turn those parameters into a model. That is why Parametric Modeling would require a plugin from XFrog. If you had all this, though, you could animate on top of changing the model.

[Oshyan]

Pablo, I think you're on track in your thinking.

I think there is some interest in closer connection between TG and Xfrog, on both our parts, but we (Planetside) don't currently have the development resources to make it happen. I don't know if Xfrog does, but they're the ones who would most benefit (in greater model and software sales), so if you can make it clear it's in their best (financial ) interest, it's more likely to happen. We would be happy to support such an effort as much as possible, of course.

Regarding wind, if I recall correctly the Xfrog software actually does support this. And, believe it or not, it's actually quite helpful to do the animation in the software that generates the mode because that software is aware of the "skeleton" or underlying structure of the model, whereas if you're just trying to animate wind on an arbitrary object file, how do you know which parts are stiffer, more or less likely to bend in the breeze, how much it should move, etc? The animation too is (or should be) all parametric! At the very least an object "skeleton" is available for inverse kinematic type motion control, whereas you have no such info to work with on a general OBJ, FBX, etc. model because it's all just triangles. So yes, integration with Xfrog could also help with animation.

- Oshyan