Nup, I don't know what it is.

Been waiting for this, Trapcode Form plugin for AfterEffects

I knocked up the above image in a few minutes playing with it, very nice, but I have a feeling it will produce images that were obviously done using the plugin, you'll soon have a trapcode form look.
And some more of my quick tests:

Very fire like.. yet not fire


Just wondering if I can achieve similar things within Cinema 4D, which would then have much more power, but be slower to render


Done with Trapcode Form

The following are all from Cinema4D:




The same principles apply for the accumulation of HUE, shifting from red thru orange to yellow depending on the density




A bit coarse. Done with lots of transparent cubes. Deformed by a noise shader.


Same as above but further deformed by a spherical deformer.



Problem is, that seems to be the hard coded maximum number of objects you can clone.... shit!

Max matrix size is 50,000...... lame! I need millions!

So uhm.. that essentially makes it useless

I tried using plane to place objects on and sure enough I can place more than 50,000 clones but it crashed

:-P

also that's then limited to only polygonal objects and cannot generate thinking particles (for no good reason)


So some kind of internal problem going on there, 50,000 polygons easy peasy, 50,000 1 polygon objects.... forget it


Had an epiphany! use visiible lights instead should be super fast...
You can make a light emit no light and cast no shadow, yet still be made visible. Which basically just draws a circular gradient around each light:

Loooks ace, sadly took 13 minutes to render :-S so much for being fast, I guess It's calculating it volumetrically
which seems very expensive way of basically putting a gradient round a light.

So the only way I can go above 50,000 involves using lights and they happen to be by far the slowest method,
which is not better if the render never actually finishes.

I've tried using Hair on splines, but you can't effect the color via mograph effectors.. why not maxon!?

I've tried cellrendering/sketch and toon


Less lights = 33 seconds


2 Minutes 24


18 Minutes


2 Minutes! that's faster!


2 Minutes


1 Minute using
cluster.. not bad

:-D

Sadly this method doesn't seem to work with deformers because it uses thinking particles
and there no way to change the color with a mograph effector... why not Maxon!!

download my example file from:

Link: helios.mine.nu --- PryoFrax.zip

This uses pyrocluster so It's nice and fast and smooth.




25 Minute Render, no idea WHY it took that long and after all that it was incorrect, It's not meant to be stripey

So frustrating, this could be such a powerful technique if it wasn't so slow.
You could use this for all sorts, generating volumetric trails from moving objects for example.

The future is volumetric baby! voxels rule! polygons suck! sub-poly-displacement can only take you so far.


36 Minutes 90,000 particles rendered with pyrocluster

I wrote my own Xpresso in order to get past the 50,000 limit of mographs matrix object.

Trying to render this many items using visible lights well... It's painfull, it just runs out of RAM almost immediately. And I\'m not short on RAM either.


8 Minutes 44,000 Particles, fairly uninteresting result. *thinks*