TD and Coder Eric Mootz updates his flocking and fluid simulators for Softimage ICE to emFlock2 and emFluid4 adding neighboring multithreading and compounds for speed and orientation control without flipping. emFlock2 is a flocking solver for Softimage|XSI’s ICE. It uses the three “classic ground rules of flocking”:
- Separation will prevent the members from crowding and colliding.
- Alignment will make each member adapt its heading to the average heading of its visible neighbors.
- Cohesion will make each member want to go to the average position of its visible neighbors.
emFluid4 is a fluid solver for Softimage|XSI’s ICE and is typically used to produce fire, smoke and dust effects.
emFlock2 v.2.0 (alpha) – “Morphology” from Eric Mootz on Vimeo.
emFluid4 v.4.0 (alpha) – “Fire & Smoke Walk With Me” from Eric Mootz on Vimeo.
Some Features of emFlock2:
- Multithreaded neighboring and flocking.
- Set of compounds for speed and orientation control without flipping.
- Set of compounds to make flocks fly along specific paths and morph into specific shapes.
- Complex generation of flight paths using nearly any desired input in any desired combination (point clouds, polygon meshes, curves, etc.).
- New neighboring compound.
- Point clouds that use emFlock2 and emFly are still just “ordinary” point clouds => they can be cached and rendered just as any other point cloud.
