[Jack Cook]

Oh, OK. That makes more sense then. Thanks.

Jack

[Jack Cook]

Thanks for your replies. I played with subdividing the object but it only made the dots smaller, didn’t give me the pattern I was looking for. Also, in the Proximal details there is a Polygon Radius checkbox, but no place to adjust the radius, so it didn’t have any effect.

I did solve the problem, though, by using a spline. I drew a spline around the coastline, and subdivided it a lot. I used the Uniform interpolation, but I haven’t experimented with the other ones. I made the Color channel plain white, and the Proximal in the Alpha channel, checking Use Vertices, and used the Cubic function and Lighten blend mode. Then I put the noise in the Luminance channel and it works fairly well. Here’s a picture.

Thanks for your help and input on this.

Jack

[Jack Cook]

You’re welcome, Ron. I recommend this arrow plugin also. I use a lot of arrows and this makes it much easier. It has a lot of options, too.

Jack

[Jack Cook]

Here’s the method I use. I’m using ver. 14 Studio, but it should work in Broadcast ver. 12 if you have Mograph and the SplineWrap deformer.

Make an arrow and subdivide it along its length so it will bend. Put it into a Cloner object, choosing Linear, and Per Step mode. Draw a spline path for it to follow. I usually use the Cubic type, and Uniform as the interpolation method.

Make a Null object, and put a SplineWrap deformer into it, and put the spline you drew in the place marked Spline, so the SplineWrap knows which spline to use as the path. Make the Cloner object a child of the SplineWrap. So you have a hierarchy: Null>SplineWrap>Cloner. Adjust the P.Z parameter in the Cloner to control the spacing of the arrows, and adjust the count to make enough arrows to fill the spline.

Use these settings for the SplineWrap: Axis: +Z, Mode: Fit Spline, End Mode: Clamp, Check Fit Bounding Box. Animate the offset of the SplineWrap to make the arrows move around the spline.

This should do it.

Jack

[Jack Cook]

Yes! That was it! Thank you, Darby. I checked the cycle box and everything works well. Thank you for you help on this!

Jack

[Jack Cook]

OK, I think I found it. They’ve separated out the repetitions from the command and now you have to set the number of repetitions in a separate window in the Attributes manager. It tells that in the Help, but it doesn’t say where it is. I stumbled upon it.

Jack

[Jack Cook]

Thanks, Adam. I do have MoGraph and I hadn’t thought of that. That’s a good suggestion. It’s good to have more than one way to do things.

Jack

[Jack Cook]

Excellent, thank you, Darby. It’s there in 12 also. Hopefully this will help.

Jack

[Jack Cook]

Yes, I use an adaptor to plug the extra monitor into the iMac. I’m not sure what it’s called – I didn’t buy it, someone in our computer tech office had one and gave it to me. Basically, the extra monitor plugs into the big white box, same one as when I used the tower. Out of that comes a cable with several output plugs, one of which is the standard Mac video plug (it would be VGA on a PC, I think, but Apple has their own), the one you would use to plug into a projector. The adaptor plugs into that, and then into the iMac, in the Thunderbolt port on the back (it has a picture of a thunderbolt above it). Then you just go into the Display preferences and press the Detect Displays button. It should work right away. But the adaptor is necessary. It should be easy to find on the Apple site.

For backup I use Time Machine, going to a LaCie 1TB hard drive.

Jack

[Jack Cook]

Yes, I have an iMac I just got earlier this year. It runs OS 10.7.4 currently, has a 27″ screen, 3.4GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB memory, and an AMD Radeon HD 6970M graphics card. I have a 23″ Apple Cinema Display hooked up to it as a second monitor (it was the screen I used with my previous Mac, which was a Mac Pro tower). It runs fast and smooth, and I run Cinema 4D on it, as well as the entire Adobe Creative Suite, and a lot of other software. It’s a fast renderer. I do all my work on it, and it’s great. I also run Parallels and Windows on it when I need to. It’s a fine machine.

Jack