Constraining cloning grid to a object surface
updated 2 weeks, 4 days ago 4 Members · 10
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Hi All,
I have a landscape where the topography animates into place. There are about 50 layers on the final versions. I’ve only showed the 1st 3 here. That bit works fine. Once the topography animation is complete I’d like a grid of trees to grow up in a wave from left to right probably using a plain effector.
I’ve put a simple tree into a cloner grid as below.
Here’s a close up showing the current ’hover’.
Is possible to constrain the trees to the horizontal steps while keeping them as a clone? I can do this if I make the clones editable and use the clamp constraint tag on each but that’s an unwieldy nightmare. I’m assuming I’ll need to set a selection for the steps.
As far as I can see aligning the cloner with the object mode only gets me this far…
…and because the topography is such an organic shape there’s no polygon grid that can be used to align the clones.
Any ideas guys?
Cheers
Stephen
From what I understand, have you tried setting the cloner mode to “Object” then selecting the surface? Also set the cloner distribution to “Surface”?
When you get to the top, don’t forget to send the elevator down for the next guy
Hi Justin,
Thank you for the response. Yes I tried that but what I’d really like to do is keep the trees in that cloned grid and have that sitting on the topography, which doesn’t itself have a grid, basically drop the individual trees directly down so that still sit in nice, neat rows.
Regards
Stephen
Ok, so just line up the cloners y axis to the surface.
When you get to the top, don’t forget to send the elevator down for the next guy
Hi Justin,
If I understand, I think that will only work if the surface is flat; the topography is stepped rather like paddy fields. I’ve shown the first 3. I need the grid to sit on each step – there’ll be about 50 in the final project.
Regards
Stephen
Yes, sometimes you have just do the work.
When you get to the top, don’t forget to send the elevator down for the next guy
I was hoping to avoid the long road, but, hey ho, it’s not so bad.
Cheers
Stephen
it should be possible to create a spline that will work, Project it down on to the landscape and clone to that. In my example I used a plane object, made it editable, did an Edge To Spline then removed half the splines (just selected one edge of points, Select Connected then delete to get rid of half the points since the splines made from a plane that way go in both directions U and V and you only want one).
For your round landscape you’d have to make a selection for the cloning to restrict it to the places you want.
A little late here but I think I figured out a work around. Clone your trees to a plane using polygon center distribution. Adjust the segments of the plane to change the amount of clones. Then shrink wrap the plane your cloning to the deformed surface
Cheers Zack, I’ll give that a go.
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