Blender - FGA Vector Field Editor
Allows creation and manipulation of vector fields using Blender particle simulations and vector math operations, as well as importing/exporting FGA files used by Unreal Engine 4.
Out-of-date Documentation is available here: https://github.com/isathar/Blender_UE4_VectorFieldEditor/wiki (or the wiki link on the side)
- Very out of date, will be updated as soon as time permits.
Some example .fga files: http://www.mediafire.com/download/4x174fgf8lmec6g/VF_Examples.zip
Features
Vector Field Editor:
- Saves current particle system velocities and blends them with saved results using one of the following methods:
- Replace, Average, Add, Multiply, Cross Product, Vector Reflection
- Particle velocities used in these calculations can be obtained using the following methods:
- Velocity, Offset Distance, Angular Velocity, Custom Vector, Point
- Curve Force tool that uses wind forces to move particles along a line.
Importer + Exporter for FGA files for use in Unreal Engine 4
Installation
- Extract to your addons directory
- Enable it in the addon manager (named FGA Vector Field Tools)
- A new tab named Vector Fields should be visible in the tools panel
Notes
Performance
- This addon's performance is heavily dependent on the speed of your CPU and memory.
- Blender may stop responding during the Create and Calculate operations, but shouldn't crash.
- On vector fields with a density of less than 128^3, operations should take less than a minute, with lower density fields (<64^3) taking a few seconds at most.
- At maximum density (128^3), creating a new vector field takes about 20 seconds on my mid-range Core i5 based PC, and calculating velocities can take up to 2 minutes (after recent tweaks).
- Performance while editing reasonably sized (< 1 million vertices) vector fields is good, while a 128^3 volume can be painfully slow under the right (wrong) circumstances.
128x128x128 and System Memory
- Editing a 128x128x128 vector field requires a 64-bit system and Blender version, as well as a large amount (> 6-8 GB) of system memory.
- This is due to the amount of particles that need to have their dynamics cached (and the number of vertices in the volume mesh)
- To avoid running out of memory while editing very high resolution vector fields, you may want to lower your undo history steps.
- Using a disk cache for your particles may help, too.
Changelog:
1.2.1:
- probably fixed noneType error messages (Thank you to kkaja123 for reporting and looking into fixing it!)
- moved the menu to the panels at the right side of the workspace
1.2.0:
- initial update to support Blender 2.8.
1.1.5:
- changed sorting of the calculation/velocity dropdown lists
- new calculation method: Vector Reflection
- added constraint to vector field volume, only moving the bounding box now moves the volume
1.1.4:
- fix for display lines not updating when new velocities are calculated
- new calculation method: Cross Product
1.1.3:
- removed the need for the update data/offsets buttons
- slight performance optimizations for display lines
1.1.2:
- new presets can now be added/removed
- export should now work with any part of the vector field selected (or both)
1.1.0:
- added support for selecting a physics preset to edit particle physics settings easily for selected vector field
1.0.1:
- renamed curve path tool to Wind Curve Force
- added editor for created curve wind force strength, distance + falloff
- the Ratio property should now work (apparently forgot to use the variable)
1.0.0:
- General:
- tools panel category renamed to Vector Fields
- saved data only includes velocities now (removed position, index)
- files made with old versions are still compatible
- cleaned up ui panel to reduce clutter, added section toggles
- some code cleanup
- Import/Export:
- moved import/export to standard menu
- made import/export properties local to their functions
- Editor:
- performance tweaks for creating new vector fields + calculating velocities
- removed slice selection tool (redundant, easily done in edit mode)
- matched default scaling to (grid units x field density)
- distances were at half scale before
- density variable used for creation is now distance between particles
- added undo functionality to Generate function
- new velocity mode: Point
- Curve Force Tool:
- changed curve force tool to create an object group to remove scene outliner clutter
- fixed curve force fields' parenting issue
- all transformations to the curve force object should now work
- curve forces now display an arrow pointing in the force's direction
0.9.5:
- Editor:
- added new calculation method: Multiply
- added different methods for obtaining velocities
- reorganized the main editor
- added calculate for selection
- added invert all button
- seperated normalize function from calculation - it's a button again
- Import/Export:
- moved density variable to object space for export script
- allows multiple vector fields in the scene during export (still exports one at a time)
- added ability to use object locations as offsets + import/export them
- scaling tweaks
- manual bounds option
- General:
- added ability to undo slice selection, calculation, curve tool, and normalize
- select x,y,z slice
- created index by axis for velocities list for slice selection and upcoming features
- switched bpy.context to passed context where possible
- description text for all variables + operators (some may be vague)
- added bug reporting url to addon manager (Github)
- readme formatting
0.9.1:
- added different generation modes: Replace, Additive, Average
- added trail option for curve path (fade influence with curve position)
- changed the way invert and normalize work
- slight calculation performance tweak
0.9:
- another performance tweak
- added invert, normalize, disable gravity options
0.8:
- added import functionality
- massive speed improvement
0.5: