[Brian Jones]

put all the parts of the ball into a Fracture object and use Mograph Effectors to move the pieces around – here’s an example using Push Apart and Random to rotate them but it is not the only way – just animated the effectors strength in the Fracture/Effectors tab but the effector’s parameters could be animated instead.

11628_sballassemble.c4d.zip

[Brian Jones]

I just remembered I didn’t see you refer to Collision Noise in your initial thread, pardon if I missed it or you just didn’t put it in but that should definitely be set to 0% for stuff like this. It adds energy to make things more believably random but it keeps adding a small bit of energy at each collision if it’s not turned off…

[Brian Jones]

in xpEmitter/Extended Data/Particle Rotation Data/Use Rotation should be on and then set Rotation Mode to Tangential

[Brian Jones]

not a PC guy but FWIW, your laptop doesn’t have enough power likely. That’s not very much RAM for running Windows 10. The processor is a Pentium not an i3/i5/i7 (which is probably not the big thing until you go to render) and the graphics is the Intel HD (old/slow check out this https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html) not the later HD3000/HD6200 etc or a dedicated GPU. I don’t know which is the most important thing there not being a PC guy but somebody does.

[Brian Jones]

you’ve read Dynamics/Tips and Tricks/The party’s Over? You’re playing with the correct settings but sometimes it’s necessary to keyframe the Angular/Linear Damping (and the other settings) to very strong values when you want it to stop, or as it says ‘steamroller tactics’ and set Time Scale (Project/Dynamics/General) to 0% – that kills all dynamics though…

[Brian Jones]

you’d need a tracer with a distance parameter – there have been a couple in the past but none that I have now (don’t know if that’s because they stopped working due to version changes or if I just haven’t needed one and haven’t kept up) and given the construction I don’t know if the distance method would work either. I played with it for a bit and I think this is it, maybe fewer cloners are possible… 11596_moleculegridtrial.c4d.zip

[Brian Jones]

it’s hard to see with only the one view, you can get semi close with a Grid Array 5x5x5 with a sphere and a null as children of the cloner (set it Iterate, the default)

Cloner
—Sphere
—Null

but that’s only semi-close, it probably needs a combo of cloners

[Brian Jones]

half a URL, tricky… It could be RF but it could also be xparticles or any number of fluid generators/fluid capable particle systems

[Brian Jones]

that’s the original particle system and you can’t get the particles to move excepting by the modifiers that are part of it’s system (Attractor, Deflector, etc – the stuff in the Simulate/Particles menu) if you could get the particles to move in the right way with a combo of those you’d have it. Objects emitted (small cubes etc) will follow the splinewrap but the particles will not because it’s a different control system.
That’s basically true of other particles systems as well Thinking Particles only moves to it’s control system (plus the particle modifiers from the older system you are using) XParticles only follows it’s control system. However, both TP and XP will follow a spline so you might need to use TP

[Brian Jones]

yeah PLA would be a lot easier to keep all the edges together, and it’s definitely objects for the circles at least take a look at the blue and yellow dots on the orange rectangle, when that rectangle flips to show it’s yellow side the dots don’t move with it