Branching lightning / electricity FX?

[skinnytorus]

Hey, guys.

I came across this footage the other day: https://youtu.be/rR6aztrOe2s?t=11.
I've been wondering if effect like this is possible in sMode? It's proximity-based, I guess,
and involves line creation based on iteration over points of the contact surface. Any ideas?

Cheers,
Skinny

Edit: I think I asked something like that before: http://forum.smode.fr/t/a-b-connect-for-points-particles-proximity-electric-charge/280. Maybe this issue needs a bit of refreshment too

[vincent]

Hi, sorry didn't saw your post.
I'w been trying to do that kind of things before, maybe with the shader generator it can be possible but you have to know how to code in glsl.
Maybe with the particle system can be doable, using sprites generating this king of lightning. I'll try to do that when I have time ^^
I already found this shader code on internet (which i adapted to put it in smode), I can share it with you if you want. My idea would be to put that as source of sprites / lines textures and use some kind of rules to bind emission / orientation /scale of a particle accordingly to the emitter position and the source. Still no clear idea if doable yet, I have to try first ^^

[skinnytorus]

Hey, Vincent.

Thanks for the answer. The lightning shader looks great and I think I've seen it among sMode 8.0 shader presets. The matter is that the effect as a shader seems hardly applicable in situations where interaction between scene 3d objects is required.

I think this should be doable though slight modifications to the Connect Points modifier.

1. Add Maximum per particle Connections parameter (this should be fun on its own without the rest of the list)

2. Add Source-Target mode with the ability to draw in a reference to the Target points/particle source (Group?). This mode should prohibit connections between points/particles WITHIN the same point/particle source i.e. should allow just interconnections BETWEEN the pairs of points/particles belonging to either of the sources (i.e. only Source <-> Target connections are allowed).

3. Allow the points generated via setting the Segments parameter to be source for the Source-Target mode as described above.

What do you think of that?

Regards,
Skinny

[vincent]

Hum, yeah, maybe that could be done like that, but I don't think the team has time now to develop that :).

Anyway if you find a way or another to do that kind of effect with the current tools, please share ^^

[skinnytorus]

Hey, Vincent.

Here's a pretty cool approach towards lightning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=wf3jwC-uTpo with point raycasting modulated by vertex weight. There's no raycast modifier in sMode (except the Spherfy, I guess) yet, but if you have plans to implement one, please, keep in mind this use case. I think UV mask should do fine as a modulator (instead of the vertex weight). What do you think?

Skinny