Bifrost develops lightning tool demo 1

[Bruce.Lee.]

HI,
Lightning tool developed using Bifrost 2.1 version point cloud. And, I used this tool to make the first demo. You need Bifrost 2.1 version and Rebel Pack 0.3.0 to run this tool.

This is only the first version, and I hope to update it in the future. My goal is to make it easy for everyone to create any type of lightning effect.
Of course, I also hope that the official BIfrost team can release better lightning tools in the future.

I upload the file here. And, I will upload it in the compound sharing area.
Please enjoy!

Thanks!

Demo:

Tutorial：

[Anonymous]

Why is only the curve visible in viewport 2.0? Why is the shape not visible?
Arnold IPR looks good.

[cscottbaker]

win 10

maya 2020.2

bifrost 2.20.1

updated lightning tool

rebelPack 0.4.0

MJCG V1

(creating bifrost geo using the update_strand_orientation, then create_tube_along_strands

then outputting in Maya as previously demonstrated.)

I get these extra ice cicle extrusions between the strands of any multy strand levels. Any thoughts on fixing this??

I'm but just starting to get into bifrost, and troubleshooting this is beyond me at the moment.

Thanks much!!

[Arnoでございます]

哇槽，猛啊兄弟，从今儿起俺就是你粉丝儿了！

[blades12]

Hi @Bruce.Lee. ,

Is it possible to change the time scale of the lightning effect?  

I want to achieve a slow motion effect,

Thanks!

[danthompson616]

Hi There @Bruce.Lee. 

I know this thread is getting a bit old but I am trying to find a way to pass alembic attribute data from houdini MtoA for use with an arnold mesh light. As the mesh light requires real maya geo, I have been trying to convert bifrostGraphShape to maya polyShape using the bifrostGeoToMaya but I can't find a way to access the Cd geometry property

for use on my aiUserData node. Do you know if there is a way to do this at present?

Thanks so much,

Dan.

p.s. how did you get this lightning example to light up the scene? was this with emission or did you use a mesh light?

[macintosh]

Hey Bruce, I have cleaned up the compound and removed the incompatible attributes and it works great now.  I'm going to use it to show my students what kind of amazing things they could build in Bifrost.  Have you ever considered hosting this in a Github Repo where people could submit enhancements or fix bugs?  I imagine you're crazy busy and maintaining an experiment like this isn't high on the priority list.  Just a thought.

[Christoph_Schaedl]

Hi macintosh if you dont mind you could upload your version on the Bifrost Discord. Bruce mentioned over there he has a lot other stuff todo.

[macintosh]

Sure.  I don't know where the invite link is though.  Can someone point me there?

[Christoph_Schaedl]

https://discord.gg/bifrost-addicts

[macintosh]

I posted it but a Mod removed it because it was't in the thread.  So fk it.  I'm not reposting it.

Sorry.   I don't deal with people like that.

[kwest2KBCYX]

Goodevening, everyone! 

I'm a bit new here but I made sure to search the forums before asking this question:

Is there a way to increase the cutoff distance for the lightning? It seems to only stop at the 15 cutoff distance. You can get a sense of what I was trying to acheive in the screenshot that I've attached to this post. I'm trying to make electricity go from one hand to the other.

[enrique.munozP3D2X]

*facepalm* oh mods...

Care to send to me?

[Christoph_Schaedl]

Its not always the mod. There are rules to follow.

[macintosh]

People who are bad at interacting with people shouldn’t be mods. First impressions shouldn’t be bad impressions. I could have deleted my own post after copying it/reposting it, or at the very least they could have waited until after I had reposted it. I was on my phone and the info I needed was lost in the moment. But whatever. I’m over this discussion. Your discord community stinks. That’s my first impression.

The thing is you don’t really need me to post it. If you know anything about Bifrost compounds then you know you can go into the compound(s) and just remove all of the red attributes (that aren’t even used.). Convert the attributes as noted previously here, etc.  It was very easy to get working again.

[macintosh]

Cut off distance is one of the attributes you can set in the compound.  If you are using the Level 1 output, for example, just set the "L1 Cutoff Distance" to whatever you want it to.  I just set it to 20 here and it works.

[Christoph_Schaedl]

Im sad thats your first impression. We try todo better next time similar happens. And the mod is in general good with interacting with people. But not every day is the same. Sorry.

[macintosh]

Ok, here is the "how to get this working" for anyone curious.  It's not really that hard, you just need to do some detective work and find all the issues.  I hope this is helpful to everyone new to exploring this.

[EDIT: Oh yeah!!  Maya 2023 is out now.  Ok, so I'm not using the "latest" but I'm also not telling my students to upgrade in the middle of the semester either.  Ha!  I'll play with 2023 later this spring.]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJKBHv9b7ns

[kwest2KBCYX]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I was doing that before for the scene in the pic and another scene but the cut off did not affect the cutoff distance. I just tried it now and it seems to work just fine now. I will test again once I am at my home workstation but it is nice to know that this was an anomaly. 

Thank you again.

[wondTLUV6]

thx!!!!

[kwest2KBCYX]

Goodmorning, everyone.

I thought that I'd give an update the issue that I was having. As stated earlier, I was having an issue where the cutoff distance was not behaving correctly in one of my scenes even though I changed the value of the cutoff distance to like 100. What I discovered is that the scale of the geometry was also a factor in the simulation not behaving as expected because once I increased the size of my mesh (which was two spheres) the lightning began working again.

I hope that this helps anyone else who is having similar issues.