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Friday, August 31, 2012

Integer.....


Integers


Integers on a line
*click to make bigger*

Are equally spaced points along a number line, like the one above.
They are considered natural numbers(positive and negative ones), which means they can't be 0.321, or -0.6123.
Integer



                                                 In math their symbol looks like ---->


which stands for Zahlen, a German word which means Numbers. O_O 



Now in ICE, an Integer looks like:

ICE Integer
*click to make bigger*


 Its Ports are dark green, and it can only put out "whole numbers", 1, -1, 0 ect.
A really good way to keep NaNs. and Inf. out of your ICE trees is to try and round all the Scalar values you can to Integers. Or so I've found.

Integers are our friends, Yeah!


Monday, August 27, 2012

Vector and his little brother Scalar



So to understand Vectors and Scalars all you need is some....

AND some...

I'm just KIDDING :D *but you do need physics*

Vector - Magnitude and direction
Scalar - Magnitude 


NASA, sums it up like this...
*click on image to make bigger*


In ICE as in physic's this is probably one of the most basic, and the most important concepts to understand,- or at least I believe it is - there are many data types in ICE(integers, Boolean etc.) But these two are my favorites.
In ICE Vectors get used for push, direction change, forces and motion blur.
This is what some of the math involved looks like...

Vectors In Physics
*click on image to in large*


Scalars on the other hand get used for scaling values, speed,mass and so on. *On a side note the word scalar comes from the Latin word ladder, and the English word scale.*
 So what do these guys look like in ICE,
the scalar....

Scalar ICE/Softimage node
*click on image to make bigger*

has green ports and can accept any real numbers. (eg. 0.88 or -11.234)
and the vector....

3D Vector ICE/Softimage node
*click on image to make bigger*

has yellow ports and can either be a 2D vector, 3D vector or 4D vector depending on what you choose,
these are point positions in Euclidean space.



Just a random thought