Hi all. I have been trying to make something like the attached screenshots. I’m using a noise CHOP to instance spheres to make these whirly patterns. Currently i’m using a TOP of the noise to colour it in the geometry.
I tried using a phong with a ramp on it, but it applied to each induvidual instance item, instead of colouring it like a continuous line. I tried to create my own noise, but it will give me a point error on the geometry.
To achieve that effect, instancing might not be what you want, as you really want to be able to apply the texture to a continuous surface. You could maybe do this in instancing with GLSL materials, but that gets pretty complicated. I’ve edited your example and instead of instancing, I’m using a sweepSOP and a skinSOP to create the tube shape, then applying the noise texture to that. The downside is that if you animate the shape of the tube, it may be a bit of a CPU hog. Reducing the number of samples going into the limitSOP will improve performance. Doing the same process in POPs would be more performant if you plan to animate it, and pretty similar overall.
I also used the depth layer and compositing to try to add in the white edges from the example images. You could also try to use phongMAT plus lighting again to achieve the rim lighting.
