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Particle swarm idea
Hi,
I have a fairly particular idea (excuse the pun ;)) for a particle swarm and was wondering if anyone had ever tackled anything like it, or indeed knows if it is possible:It would start with particles moving across the screen from left to right. There would be some turbulence, so the particles would be undulating slightly. There wouldn’t be loads of particles maybe 30-40 crossing the screen at any one time and they’d be shifting with varying speeds.
Next comes the interesting bit: After around 3-4 seconds particles would start to be attracted to a target, which would be a piece of geometry, lets say a plane. Not all particles would be attracted with an equal force, i.e some would just ignore it and fly past, others would be pulled towards it strongly. Those particles that arrive at the target would each be attracted to an individual point on the poly mesh. Once a particle arrives and stops at a point, that point is now filled and the other attracted particles would need to fill ‘vacant’ points. Once all points are ‘taken’ particles are no longer attracted to the target.
Here’s the second interesting bit: The particles that occupy the points on the target remain there for different amounts of time (3-4 seconds) before detaching themselves and flying off in the general direction of the swarm. Once their point is free, another attracted particle may move onto it. So the effect is a shape whose points fill with particles, but its not always the same particles as shapes drift on and off depending if there is a free point.
Having just read this back it seems like a big ask, and improbable that anyone has done anything exactly like this. But some general steers would be really appreciated…
Thanks,
Simon
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3 Replies
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This isn’t exactly your scenario, but it’s sort of close and might give you an idea how to do it with Mograph. Basically I cloned an object onto a sphere and animated that to get the initial swarm motion (with a Random effector set to noise). Then I used an inheritance effector to send to clones to a Matrix object that I cloned onto an identical sphere with different animation. The splitting/sticking behavior is accomplished by animating the effectors’ weight, which is controlled by a noise shader in the Shader Effector. The noise is also animated via the layer shader.
https://www.3danvil.com/tutorials/swarm_split%20.c4d
I’m sure it’s possible to do with Thinking Particles, no doubt with more control, but I think I’d need a week and at least a case of beer to nail that down. 🙂
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nicely done. thanks for posting that adam.
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Thanks so much for this. It’s great you gave it a try! I’m going to analyze it this week, tweak it to my needs an then post up the file.
Simon
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