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randomly positioned secondary clones on visible primary clones – doable?
Been stuck for a bit now. Included is the problem and a messy work around.
I have object1 (a cube in the example) cloned across a plane as “poly center” distribution to get a nice grid. I also have a shader effector with a noise map turning some of these object1 clones off so I get a ratty patch work of visible object1’s (I do realize they are all there and some of them are just turned off to the render engine).
What I want to do now is clone another object (object 2 – a sphere in the example) in a random pattern (or using surface) on each of the visible clones – so that the pattern of objects 2’s on each clone is different from any neighboring clones.
The clones on clones I have working in example 1 (the second cloner is a child of object 1 in the hierarchy under the cloner- I’m not sure why, but making the second cloner a child of the first cloner also works – even though you don’t need to point to a specific object to receive the clones)Three problems with this method – first is that the pattern of the object2’s on each clone isn’t random. Five object1’s are in the exact same spot on each of the object 1 clones.
Second, in some tests I’ve done, because the secondary clones are being distributed on all clones visible or not, I can see secondary clones floating in space between the visible primary clones. I have tried applying a shader effector using the same noise map I used for the primary clones to turn them off, and while that did have an effect, it doesn’t match the positioning of the primary clones. (i have also tried this with the random effector on both primary and secondary clones for visibility). In example 1, if you use the trick of the shader effector to turn some off it reduces the non-randomness but it’s just turning a few off here and there so the pattern remains.
Third – I can get some randomness to the repeated pattern of secondary clones by adding a random effector to the secondary clones but by the time it looks random, the clones are beyond the borders of each of the primary clones and floating in space again.
I’d be happy enough to shoot the output of the cloner through expresso and handle tier two clones with a particle engine (or visa versa) but I wasn’t sure if that would work or what order things were done in – expresso positioning first or mograph positioning first.
I have tried all sorts of combinations in vain but the only way I can see to do this is to use multiple cloners for the second teir clones and have them hit the grid pattern of the original plane. Then randomize the position of each of these “singles generators” and ensure that they don’t exceed the edges of the primary clones. (as shown in the attached file2)
I guess what would help is to understand the “space” the texture pattern lives in for each of the cloners and their effectors. I would have though it would have been the space of the original object the texture was mapped to – but then how is that texture projected onto the clones that are no longer on the texture object’s surface. I would have also thought that using the same shader effector would produce the same texture-space control on each cloner it was applied to, or using the same random with a turbulence and the same seed would have done the same – but again what happens when two cloners don’t produce the same volume-space of clones – does the texture pattern repeat? scale to fit? get projected larger?
Are there any tricks for this kind of clones on clones on clones fractal insanity?
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1 Reply
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I would set the source of the secondary clones to be the first cloner rather than the object being cloned. Then apply a second shader effector to the second cloner (referencing the same plane/UV space) so you have more flexibility (you can adjust the noise scale and seed values to taste without affecting the level one clones).
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