Pages

Monday, August 27, 2012

Vector and his little brother Scalar



So to understand Vectors and Scalars all you need is some....

AND some...

I'm just KIDDING :D *but you do need physics*

Vector - Magnitude and direction
Scalar - Magnitude 


NASA, sums it up like this...
*click on image to make bigger*


In ICE as in physic's this is probably one of the most basic, and the most important concepts to understand,- or at least I believe it is - there are many data types in ICE(integers, Boolean etc.) But these two are my favorites.
In ICE Vectors get used for push, direction change, forces and motion blur.
This is what some of the math involved looks like...

Vectors In Physics
*click on image to in large*


Scalars on the other hand get used for scaling values, speed,mass and so on. *On a side note the word scalar comes from the Latin word ladder, and the English word scale.*
 So what do these guys look like in ICE,
the scalar....

Scalar ICE/Softimage node
*click on image to make bigger*

has green ports and can accept any real numbers. (eg. 0.88 or -11.234)
and the vector....

3D Vector ICE/Softimage node
*click on image to make bigger*

has yellow ports and can either be a 2D vector, 3D vector or 4D vector depending on what you choose,
these are point positions in Euclidean space.



Just a random thought

No comments: