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Introduction

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mcjJet 2 for DS 1,2,3,4

mcjJet is a script for Daz Studio

that lets you create steam and smoke effects

mcjJet 2 adds color-ramp effects and better face-the-camera handling

for complicated and richer effects search the Daz3d.com store for the word "particles"

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/search/searchsub/?_m=d&sstring=particle

and the vendor "Nerd3D"

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/search/searchsub/?_m=d&sstring=nerd3d

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History

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Version 6 11 Nov. 2019 3:33am - now supports Uber ( Emission Color instead of Ambient Color and Cutout instead of Opacity

Version 5 May 5th 2015 3 pm the Daz Studio version >4.5 now works with "instances" as long as they are parented to a node re-named Billboards

Version 4 Sep 18, 2014, 6:34 PM

Version 3 Sep 18, 2014, 6:28 PM

Version 2 Sep 4, 2014, 11:47 AM

Version 1 Sep 4, 2014, 10:52 AM

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Installation

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the Zip file is found at the bottom of this page under the name mcjJet2.zip

unzip it in your daz content folder

typically this means

C:\Program Files\DAZ\Studio\content\

or sometimes

C:\Users\YOURNAME\Documents\DAZ 3D\Studio\My Library\

you will also need some mcjBillboards figures which you can obtain here:

https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts3/mcjbillboards

note : mcjJet2 distributed before Sept 18 2014 is only usable with the standard Billboards figure

The new mcjJet versions should work with any figure ( like the mcjBillboards2 figure )

as long as each "bone" has its own material ( 90 materials for a 90-panels billboard figure )

mcjJet2 for DS 1, 2, 3 was not affected by this issue

As of Sept 18 2014 there's new billboard figures here :

https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts4/mcjbillboards2

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Use

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- Load a billboards figure ( Content/Figures/mcasual )

the billboard figures contains little textured planes which we will call "puffs"

- select a node in the scene which will be the location of the jet, or the "emitter"

in this example we'll select the blue cylinder,

( Create / Primitives / Cylinder / Height 1 meter / Diameter 1cm )

Launch the mcjJet Script found in Studio/Scripts/mcasual

lets go through the interface from the top left to the bottom right

- Billboard figure or group

lets you select which puffs figure will be used, in the event you loaded many billboards figures in your scene

( advanced users : mcjJet considers all objects labeled *billboards* as valid billboards figures

( you could create a null , rename it to "100billboards" and parent many objects to it )

you could load five 50billboard figures to get 250-puffs effects

- Type of Jet

you can select the shape of the area which the puffs will be launched

- Jet width / diam in cm

here you can specify the width/height/diameter of that area

- Jet Spread Angle in Degrees

the puffs are projected according to the direction of the emitter, in our example, the blue cylinder points up, so the puffs go up.

but the direction of the puffs is allowed to deviate from this axis by an angle between 0 degrees and 180 degrees

- Puffs fade out at end of life

when this is check-marked, the puffs will appear with 100%opacity and just before they disappear they will have an opacity of 0%

- Loopable

mcjJet recycles the 50 puffs, if you check-mark 'loopable' each particle will always be shot from the same location.

So you can render animations with 50 or 100 or 200 frames that will loop with great accuracy

- Pre simulate

if this is not check-marked, the effect will start with one puff being emitted, then another ... until the 50 puffs are active. If you check-mark this, mcjJet

start the smoke effect with all 50 puffs in movement

- Delete all the puffs opacity keyframes

To get the fade-out effect, mcjJet animates the Opacity channel of the puffs, this is your chance to delete those keyframes.

- Scale of puff at birth , Scale of puff at extinction

the factor by which the puffs are inflated as they go through life. Note thet the standard puffs are 10cm in diameter

- Start frame, End frame

the range of frames where the effect is animated. Note that even if there's 50 puffs being animated, only one keyframe per frame is created, so it's not too cpu intensive

- Load settings, Save settings

lets you store and retrieve most of the settings in a text file

- Create animation

mcjJet creates the puffs animation according to those settings

Movin around

To avoid incomprehensible effects, the billboard figure root node should be left alone, not moving at all.

but the emitter node, the cylinder in our example, can move and produce very cool effects

Burst mode, pixie dust effect

a delay, followed by a burst of particles.

then particles fade away or shrink/expand

the burst mode is obtained by

not check-marking the "Loopable" check-box

not check-marking the "Pre-Simulate" check-box

The Default settings button

will restore the script to its "factory settings"

Also, when you exit the script, your settings are saved.

You get them back the next time you open the program

Re-Orient billboards option : Automated camera-facing

- no re-orientation

the particles orientation is not modified

- face the camera straight on

the particles are kept parallel to the camera plane

- face the camera but standing vertically

like a billboard trees for example

NEW

- As emitted and face the camera

the billboards are primarily oriented along the emission path

then we spin them so they face the camera, as best as they can

NEW : Color Ramps

The Opacity / Diffuse / Ambient color ramps are used only if their corresponding check-boxes are check-marked

At the start of the particle's "life" the left-most color/opacity is used,

At the end of the particle's "life", the right-most color/opacity is applied

If you installed the script properly, there's a few color-ramps in a folder named mcjColorRamps

it's in the same folder as the script itself.

You can create and use your own color ramps, provided they are 256 pixels wide and in jpg format.

New Billboards

As before there are alternative opacity maps / color maps for the billboard figures

they are located in YourDazContentFolder/Runtime\textures\mcasual\billboards

i added this one which was used for some of the recent effects

There's also a new 30-particles 4-panels-per-particle billboard figure

it may be used without the need for the "face-the-camera" processing/keyframing

Known Quirk

Maybe not in all versions of Daz Studio, but at least in version 3, each time you run a hefty script like mcjJet,

the processing speed slows down,

For some scripts the processing time can double for each script run.

One remedy i use is to set up some smoke effects, then save my scene, close daz studio, restart it, load the scene

and were're back to decent processing speed.

Daz Studio 4's new "Instances" feature ... or in fact any group of objects

Daz Studio 4.5 has a new feature named Instances

Here i created a 10cm diameter Primitive Sphere ( 32 x 16 facets )

then i invoked Create / New Node Instances

I was then asked to specify how many instances of the ball i want

I specified 256

The 256 spheres can be moved independantly

BUT only the original sphere can be deformed and only the original sphere can have its materials modified

when you modify the original sphere, all the 256 instances adopt the modifications

As of May 5th 2015 mcjJet2 was improved and now correctly supports groups of Objects

the group can contain any object, including our 256 clone-spheres

We simply select the group node ( usually a Null node )

And use mcjJet2 the same way we did with billboards

This includes the requirement : the group node must include the word "billboard" in its label-name

A limitation is that the special color and transparency effects wont work on "instances"

A few note about the settings

the balls will be emitted from a 1 meter wide line

with a small spread angle

the animation will be a loop

we pre-simulate, so it will look as if that loop has always been going on ( we dont see the initial outburst )

we de-selected the color ramp effects

the balls will travel at speeds between 10 m/s and 20 m/s

during their lefe cycle the balls will inflate 3X

note the timeline settings, the frame rate is 128 !

i will render this at 30 fps, but using a high frame rate like this will make the effect more dynamic, more balls will be emitted per second

the simulation length : 256: matches the number of balls, usually this helps the loop-feature succeed

and the result is ... quite nice !