Essential TD Skills: Designing & Implementing Algorithms

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A popular misconception we often encounter when answering questions, is the notion that in order to simulate an effect A that looks somewhat similar to another algorithm we built to simulate effect B, all you need to do is tweak a few parameters.

While true in a few circumstannces, there’s a fundamental difference in tweaking an algorithm’s parameters and designing an algorithm to simulate a specific behaviour.

Even more so, there’s a fundamental difference in designing an algorithm and implementing it.

In this video, Mo goes covers the three (or four) things you’re gonna go through when creating an algorithm and implementing it:

– The Concept
– The Algorithm
– The Implementation
– The Parameter Space (Tweaking Values)

Download Project File

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10 Comments

  1. Thanks a lot for this amazing tutorial!

    I would like to create the same effect on an object but I can’t really find a way to get the same height attribute working with this setup.

    Do you have an idea?

    Thank you

  2. great tutorial, thanks! Opened the render file to try and get to grips with redshift and have a look. The render looks super washed out and pale compared to the render in your tut, is there some post work done on the render or should the scene file look similar out the box? thanks!

    • Heyhey,

      indeed, the rendering has been comped. 🙂

      Cheers, Mo

    • learnerman5000

      so then provide the info on the comp to achieve a usable result without leaving people like me and romain in the dark. seems classic to me.

      • Thank you for your kind and constructive feedback, we’ll consider it when creating future tutorials. Cheers, Mo

    • Hi Stuart,

      ouh, neat – no, I wasn’t aware of it.
      Looks like she/he used a polygonal grid instead of a heightfield. Interesting.

      Cheers, Mo

  3. Such a simple an elegant algorithm! I had been trying to implement a dune solver for days and saw this. It really made me think I should have maybe tried to come up with an algorithm , instead of just trying to implement an existing one.
    After struggling for days , I managed to get something working, but I’m doing a lot of volume>points>volume atttribute transfering. Time to join your Patreon to step up my game!

    Mathew Jukes has video of an HDA implementation of this paper.
    https://vimeo.com/232272410
    https://smallpond.ca/jim/sand/dunefieldMorphology/index.html

    and Allesandro Pepe has a toppling algorithm article
    https://pepefx.blogspot.com/2018/

    Thanks for all the tutorials, all so clearly explained and helpful!

  4. Hi Moritz!

    Loved the tutorial! I can’t download the project file, seems like there is some kind of problem there. Would it be possible to re-upload the file, please?

    • Hi Dana, thanks for the kind words and apologies for the link – it’s been fixed now.

      Cheers, Mo

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