I’m getting really into pointcloud and particles via instancing from TOPs but I’m really struggling with the theory of manipulating textures to get specific results. I broadly get the 32bit rbg=xyz part of it and have been doing interesting things with noise and displacement but they’re all a bit random and I’d like to start wrestling a bit more control over what I’m doing so that I can get more specific results.
Does anyone know of a good tutorial or reading material that goes into some of the theory. So few tutorials on this stuff actually delve into the ‘why’ or ‘how’ these things work and the Math parts of texture manipulation are proving to be a bit of a block in my progress.
Would love to see something that goes from simple to complex forms so that one can build up a better understanding on how they work.
the first resource I would point to is allTD with a bunch of videos concerning pointclouds: https://alltd.org/tag/pointcloud/
we also had last year Matthew Biederman on our InSession and talked in the second half on some more specific pointcloud problems, like calculating distances etc.
In general it’s really useful to get as comfortable as possible with the ideas of math being executed in TOPs - so how to solve math problems with textures. To that end I would really recommend diving into all the videos @paketa12 has been publishing:
Using textures for pointclouds is not straightforward but very powerful, it requires to shift your thinking a bit.
Ah, that’s super useful, especially the In Session video. I’ve done a bunch of Paketa12’s vids which are great but you can tell they’re being made by someone with a fundamentally different understanding of how it all works (I come from a Flash background so I think very differently), and like many tutorial people, isn’t always so clear about why certain decisions are being made or the mechanics by which the technique is working.
