Suggestions

thanks jim ... i agree. enough for now : )

Hello

I've been having fun playing with Verve. It's great. I'm afraid I haven't got much further than pushing paint around. In particular I enjoy turning off drying and just watching the paint flow back and forth.

I work in an animation company mostly using Adobe After Effects. I've always thought that fluid dynamics simulations would be great for motion graphics. I'd love someone to create a plug-in for After Effects that did this sort of thing. I realise that you don't have time for extra projects, but do you think it is theoretically possible to take this technology and record the motion of the paint? I'm not a programmer so I have no idea of the complexities involved.

Thanks

Paul

[Taron]

Hey Palhil, welcome to the forum, first of all!
Recording the animation is not only possible, but part of my plan!
As soon as I have some more time I will go at that for sure!
I've written the ZbornToy AEPlugin, if you've ever heard of it, and Verve already exports the image in two layers to work beautifully with it (example).
To buy the ZbornToy, by the way, is a bit more generous way of donating to my Verve development, hehe, but I would never ask anyone to do that.

However, I'll have a go at the recording for sure. Thanks for asking!

Cool, sounds good.

I've often wondered why no-one has ever made a fluid dynamics plug in for After Effects. I look forward to seeing what you come up with. I've already had fun thinking of how it might work and what you could do with it.

Of course, let us know if you need any help with testing.

[Taron]

I trust you'll just go right at it, once I release it. I'm really naughty that way and let people have even my weirder experiments. Except that I've started to occasionally release "experimental versions" separately, just so that a working version will still exist.
In all fairness, though, I believe there is a fluid dynamics after effects plugin. I don't know the name, but I'm sure you'd find it, if you googled it. Oddly enough, a friend of my friend Philipp Spoeth was working on that. I know for sure he has released 3d versions of it for Lightwave and some others...C4d and Max maybe, I don't remember.
Whether it is as direct and as fun as Verve will be... no idea, hehe! ...but I'm sure it's cool.

Hmm I'm sure I've tried looking for fluid dynamic plug-ins before and never found any. However, after taking a look just now I found Fluid Dynamics 2.1 by Electrocolor.

http://www.electrocolor.com/gallery.html#Fluid

Is this the one you were talking about?

I'd still be interested to see what you come up with.

[Taron]

No, I don't think so. I think his stuff looks a little more professional. This looks more like some cute first steps, like he's just discovered the power of fluids, hehe. However, it's tough with AE, because they don't really support any openGL implementation beyond display, I think, from what I had heard. Not like it was a big deal to do it fully CPU based, but it would be quite slow on larger projects. Especially with fluids you want to be able to experiment and not waiting around for every little test.

I'm sure I'll have some fun with animation later and will most certainly add features with that in mind then.

I downloaded the demo and couldn't actually get it to work anyway. Maybe I was doing something wrong or it could be that it's not compatible with CS6.

I believe Element 3D by Video Copilot uses Open GL in After Effects. But you have to have specific types of graphics cards. I'm not sure how they get it to work. It's all beyond me.

[Taron]

It's a little beyond me at times, too, particularly now that I don't have any time to explore. Anyway, good stuff is waiting to happen for sure!

There are two fluid plugs for AE as I know.
Both are laggy, slow and sub- optimal.
So uncool I even forgot the second ones name.

Taron, we are waiting