LumenRT: How to influence flying birds with windspeed.

Hi Ivo,

I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve - are you referring to a single bird or the many birds set in the Sun& Atmosphere settings? As windspeed is non-directional in LumenRT, it wouldn't make sense for it to affect the flightpath birds.

You can manually control the flight speed of a single bird, but not the speed of the many birds. A more important enhancements to this, I think, would be to control the shape and position of the many birds. They fly around in random directions which is not the way they perform in nature.

Max

Hi Ivo,

I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve - are you referring to a single bird or the many birds set in the Sun& Atmosphere settings? As windspeed is non-directional in LumenRT, it wouldn't make sense for it to affect the flightpath birds.

You can manually control the flight speed of a single bird, but not the speed of the many birds. A more important enhancements to this, I think, would be to control the shape and position of the many birds. They fly around in random directions which is not the way they perform in nature.

Max

Hi Max,

One can change the wind direction of the clouds, so why not have the birds move accordingly?

You are right about the birds moving random in LumenRT. That was what made me write this question in the first place.
Seagulls hover pretty steady in the air when hovering head first into strong wind. They go top speed effortlessly with tailwind. And they seem to slide sideways relative to the ground when there's crosswind. When birds circle around, wind makes theme deviate accordingly. And so on.

I re-did the animation. One bird circling around, getting deviated from left to right. High up left is a bird with tailwind, to the right one is allmost motionless. Also way up high a bird doing the side shift thing.


LumenRT Update 3

Win10

I like where you're going with this! It would be great if LumenRT was more observant of the laws of nature, and more respectful of the humble seagull's flightpath. Taking this further, I think the starting point would be to establish an actual wind direction. Currently the Clouds> Speed slider simply moves the cloud path direction around in a 360 circle depending on the position of the slider. There isn't an actual "wind direction" which could then be used to influence the movement of other objects such as flags, trees or birds.

A limitation to wind in trees is that there is no directional influence, the branches simply flap around in random directions. Plant Factory (used to create the LumenRT plant library) does have settings to control this, but directional influence seems to be ignored in LumenRT. All we have is a Still/ Windy slider. Hopefully the devs might consider a universal wind direction influence to be applied to objects in the scene.

Personally, I'd prefer more content to use. It seems you spend quite a bit of time observing seagulls, but my scenes are usually 2000km away from the coast so I don't want a flock of birds to be made up of seagulls! A flock of sacred ibis flying in formation, or a pair of Martial Eagles soaring in the thermals would make me happy. No wait... how is Bentley/ Eon going to create thermal wind direction?

Max

Hello Max,Ivo

Thank you so much for the inputs and details description on the above points mentioned by you too.

We have just added seagulls slider for the feeling of the LumenRT scene, but not logically for the precise task.

Although you can manually place in the scene, after all its for visualization purpose.

But i will take most of the points from your above statements and try to get this to internal team.

hope so we will come with some idea to get this done.

Thanks you again for your valuable inputs and thinking for LumenRT as a successful brand for future prospect.

Rg,

Ankur Ashesh    

Max Voigt said:

Martial Eagles soaring in the thermals

Actually the sideway circling movement was inspired by a Tawny Eagle I saw once. Although I could easily add an upward movement in Microstation to mimic thermic, I have no use for it in the Netherlands.

I could use some sparrows flying short bursts or hopping around the perimeter. Or pigeons fighting over bread crumbs and harassing tourists. But than again, birds are just extras,  it is not about them.

Ankur Ashesh said:

get this to internal team

Thank you for listening Ankur.