having problems with particles and point sprites

Beginners
1

Hey, just getting started with TouchDesigner here…

I’ve been through the tutorials for particles and I’m running into a frustrating problem when I try to use the pointsprite MAT.

In the tutorials, the “constant point scale” parameter appears to adjust the size of the rendered particle sprites, but nothing happens when I change that value. For me, the particles are always rendered as a single pixel no matter what.

I’ve gone through the tutorial videos over and over, I don’t see anything that I’m missing. Can someone help me out? Are the tutorials out of date for the current build of TouchDesigner?

thanks,
Ben

2

Hey, on the particle SOP are you changing the parameter (forget it’s name offhand) from ‘Render as Points and Lines’ to ‘Render as Point Sprites’?

3

Hi,

Sorry for jumping in on this thread but I’m having this exact same problem, when i add the point sprite MAT to my geometry sop which contains the particles it isn’t doesn’t do anything??

I’ve got the point sprite option selected?

4

Could you post your file for me to look at?

5

Here’s the file with the pointsprite scale set to 50. One other thing to note is that when I add the pointsprite MAT and set it as the material, the particles change from white dots to red and green dots.

Here are the particle related values that I’ve changed from the defaults:

  • Particle life expectancy was 1000, now 1
  • Particle render mode was lines, now point sprites.
6

Hmm it seems to work on my machine.
Can you post a screenshot of what you see? Also what are your systems specs and driver version?

7

Here’s a shot of how it looks on my computer.

System Info:

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional
Version: 6.1.7600 Build 7600
System Type: x64-based PC
Processor: Intel(R) Core™ i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz, 2668 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
Display Adapter: ATI Radeon HD 5800

Video driver info:

Driver Packaging Version: 8.861-110524a-119606C-ATI
Catalyst Version: 11.6 ← I just noticed that 11.8 is available, I’ll update and see if it helps
Provider: ATI Technologies Inc.
2D Driver Version: 8.01.01.1162
Direct3D Version: 7.14.10.0841
OpenGL Version: 6.14.10.10834
Catalyst Control Center Version: 2011.0524.2352.41027

8

Ya it seems like a driver bug, let me know if the newer drivers fix it or not. I can report it to AMD if not.

9

Updated to 11.8, no change. Here’s the updated info for the drivers:

Driver Packaging Version: 8.881-110728a-124445C-ATI
Catalyst Version: 11.8
2D Driver Version: 8.01.01.1178
Direct3D Version: 7.14.10.0855
OpenGL Version: 6.14.10.11005
Catalyst Control Center Version: 2011.0728.1756.30366

10

Is there anything else I could try that might point to where the problem is? I’d also be happy to provide any further system details if that would be helpful to you guys.

thanks!

11

Just an update, I picked up an EVGA GTX570 today to replace my ATI graphics card, everything is working great now.

-Ben

12

Glad to hear it. I’ve reported the bug AMD also so hopefully it will get fixed soon.

13

Hey,
Probably a bit late to be useful to you. But I’ve talked with AMD and found that the first issue with this file is that it’s missing a pscale attribute, which seems to be defaulting to 0 on AMD but 1 on Nvidia. To fix this append a Point SOP to your Particle SOP and under the Point page change ‘Keep Scale’ to ‘Add Scale’.

Beyond this there is also a bug that causes the color to be incorrect when using a texture, which I’ve added a workaround for in the next bug-fix release of 077.

14

I just had the same issue after moving a project from a MacBook Pro Retina with Geforce GT 650M Driver 306.97 to a PC with Quadro 4000s Driver 307.32 .

Adding a point size fixed the problem, otherwise the pointsprites wouldn’t display.

Could there be something going on between the Tesla and Kepler Architecture? I move projects between these two computers all the time. I guess I’ll just use the pointSOP as standard practice.