Help, breaking apart an image and having it reconstruct itself

there's a plugin for this ... it was called " image particle" and emits time-invariant particles based on image mask.

Can't remember where to get it tho'. I have it here but i don't remember whether it was commercial or not...

On the other hand, you can map a plane and explode it with KnM 3d, or code it your way with an iterator and a bunch of sprites. If a recall correctly, Zuga did an example patch around this approach. Check his website.

With all due respect to Zuga's example, it's probably better to look at the Apple Developer example that does this:

Developer/Library/Quartz Composer/Examples/Patches/Image Texturing Properties Grid.qtz

Zuga does a kind of quirky dual nested iterator setup. The developer example shows a more reasonable route.

(@franz, you got it from me re: Image Particle ;) It used to be in the NI download (I think), but it apparently isn't anymore. There are now two similar plugins that are both broken, crappy, and cause log errors, NI Image Particle, and Sandstorm.)

The k3D explode force is really the only thing that looks like legitimate fragments of an exploded object though.

Is it possible with any of these plugins to have the explosion run in reverse/palindrome?

Yeah, the K3D explode is controllable via external timebase.

(For some reason cwright's motion blur setup on a qtz we collaborated on in this dl seems to be running ULTRA slow now, so I lopped it out to show palindrome mode... this must be due to some update that happened after cwright stopped maintaining K3D. It's actually pretty damn bad, performance wise, which miffs me, as it used to be totally usable...the motion blur/iteration, that is).

Thanks George, I still know so little about time and maths in QC your generosity really helps.

Btw, sussing out my performance issue I spoke about. Please disregard....it may be related to a memory leak I had earlier. Smokris is using the same gpu, plugin build, and os build, as me and getting expected fps. I think my sytem has something quirky going on. K3D is a champ, as usual.

No problem! It's my pleasure.

Well my 8600M GT only gets about 12fps with that motion blur comp.

But while this subject is open what does the Seed parameter of the 3D object explode do?

Well, 12 fps is about right. It's not quick w/ that motion blur wrapped around it, but the movement is fairly smooth. I was getting an insanely slow rate. I think that cwright's motion blur setup has a lot of merit regardless of fps hit though.

The seed parameter is a noise seed for a pseudo-random sequence. This allows one to have a distinct, deterministic "noise", or random motion to the explosion of facets, that is also repeatable, as long as the noise seed and all other params are the same.

If you wanted to explode in an x/y place more than once, and have the pieces fly kind of differently, but keep your forces the same, you can just change the seed, and get a bit different randomization to the explosion.

cwright or smokris may have some clarification or further detail about the Seed param, but I think that's about it.