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‘network globe’. Trying to trace edges of a mesh with sweep nurbs, with spheres positioned at vertex positions.
Please see the following links for examples of what I’m trying to create.
‘Network Globes’
https://www.sxc.hu/photo/1008232
https://www.sxc.hu/photo/1043922So the challenge is to recreate the look of the images above, and animate it in such a way that it appears to be building from point to point (or vertex to vertex). Initially I tried to animate a sweep nurbs object’s end growth parameter to ‘grow’ one line segment. At the beginning and end of this line segment I have a sphere animating from a scale of 0% to 100%. I thought I could just take this animated group as a null and place it under a clone object with it set to radial. Then I duplicated the clone object and parented the first clone object to it. To make a long story short, it didn’t even come close to creating a geometric shape similar to a icosahedron or the images above.
So, I’m wondering if there’s an Xpresso approach to my problem. I want to have sweep nurbs trace the edges of the mesh, with spheres growing at each vertex of the object. All of this needs to be sort of organic and random in the growing or building of this ‘network globe’. I could of course do this all by hand with multiple sweep nurbs objects, but I’m afraid it will take an incredibly long time and limit my ability to quickly make changes.
Anyone have an idea? 🙂
I look forward to your replies. Thanks guys!
Eric Bowman
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7 Replies
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1008232 is doable with the Atom Array object and a sphere with the right construction (starting with Icosahedron probably). Depends on what kind of ‘smoothness’ you are looking for.
The other is tougher…
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Thanks Brian. I appreciate the quick reply, and that’s exactly the model I was going for. I can’t believe that was there the whole time. I kept looking right over it. The model is frickin’ perfect now, but how does one go about animating each element now. I’m going to hit the manuals. 🙂
yeah i thought the second image would be a bit more complicated, and honestly it’s not needed for this project.
Thanks again.
Eric Bowman
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Sorry, I was moving fast and just responded based on the pictures. Animation would be tougher since the Atom Array is just meant for what it does. You can set it to Single Elements and make it editable or do a Current state to Object and you will get all the pieces as separate objects. Those could be animated separately but it would be a load…. Maybe Xpresso iterating through a list (but the axis on all the edges would need to go to the root end you want it to scale from). Maybe MoGraph…. I’ll take a look later today
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Not a problem man. I’m glad someone out there is willing to help me out on this. I greatly appreciate it.
I’d love to hear your thoughts when you get time later. I’m curious as to how to get it to work via Xpresso. I’m a bit green on Xpresso other than simple things. It’s something I’m really trying to get into though…the true power seems to be in Xpresso.
I did read on CG Society about one possible solution but I can’t get it to function properly. Nick recommends using the link box in User Data for the Atom Array object. I can’t seem to get it to change a thing though. Here’s a quote from his post explaining the process:
NWoolridge
11-05-2007, 05:12 PM
Certainly the mograph cloner object adds all that flexibility and more, though the setup might be a tad more involved…
…Like this, for instance.Drop an object into the link box in the User data area of the “array cloner’s” attributes field. Change the child objects in each cloner to get a different object onto the edges, for instance.
A little more xpresso would get you a pretty automated setup, with central control over many of the various parameters…
Nick
Eric Bowman
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A year and a half later, but how did you end up doing this? I need to create almost the exact same thing. It was amazing how simple changing the geometry of the sphere was, but what it did to the Atom Array. How did you end up animating it? That is where I am getting stuck as well.
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Hi Mike,
Unfortunately for you I used the Mograph tools. (I read another post you created about this same subject and noticed you have the core package)
It’s a mess of using random effectors, step effectors, cloner objects and sweep nurbs. It seems you could do basically the same thing with sweep nurbs and hand drawn splines, but lord it would take a while.
I can shoot you a file if you private message me your email, but I don’t know if it will help much if you are missing the mograph module. The mograph module is definitely worth it’s money IMO. I use it all the time for…wait for it…motion graphics. 🙂
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uh…i’m not sure you can private message on the cow’s forums. hmm…I just assumed that.
Eric Bowman
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