[John Hammond]

I’m pretty sure you could do that with thinking particles – but like I say, I’m starting out so I’m not sure how.

Thinking particles is quite hard to being with, it’s all done with Xpresso by wiring nodes together. Actually it’s quite straight forward to use Xpresso once you get going, but I mean learning to use Xpresso and TP are whole subjects in themselves, so you might be best off sticking with Hair for now and then learning the rest.

Surely there are some pro’s around that could help you more than me with the sunflower problem..

John

[John Hammond]

Just incase anyone is reading this thread, In the end I ditched TP and went for a blobmesh, then used that as the object to create a MGmatrix on. Then used cloner, setup to use the matrix to clone onto, and cloned my membranes onto it to form the cellular wall.

Also used cloner and tracer and randomiser to make a ball of DNA

Peace out

[John Hammond]

Hi Dave,

The footage is actually SD PAL DV, captured from tape to hard disk but as yet not re rendered, so I don’t think that’s it. I really don’t know why it’s doing this.. maybe some anomolly or maybe a frame is dropped but AE isn’t showing me.. maybe due to the way it handles interlaced… but I don’t have a clue

Thanks,
john

[John Hammond]

Hi,

In CS3 (production suite), in AE you go to render queue, then output module and in the list is Adobe Flash video – thats’t what I always do.

With the production suite you also get the Adobe Media Encoder in the start menu so you could do it there.

I don’t know about the standalone version.. maybe it all runs off the same Adobe FLash encoder engine and maybe you only get that the with the whole suite.. I don’t know!

[John Hammond]

Hi,

I have been learning Thinking Particles recently. With it you can set a particle (say, a petal) to emit from a spline (your flower’s circle that the hair currently is attached to).

You could have the petals born on frame one, then on frame two have the birth stop. Have zero speed on the particles, and life set to maximum. So they just stay put.

Then with thinking particles Wind node, blow them away from the petal by animating wind strength from zero to whatever.

Not sure if this would work and I certainly haven’t tried a set up quite like this.

There may be other options using Hair, or MoGraph ..so I’s hold up and see what others say.

Good luck

[John Hammond]

Update:

I have now also tried using a mograph matrix on object mode with my MetaBall as the source. I have set it to generate TP particles.

I am having trouble with this as the particles pop in and out of existence as the Metalball mesh’s vertex count changes during the animation.

So.. I am now thinking that I want my particles to either flow across the surface of my metaball or be wedged between 2 copies of the metaball – one a bit smaller than the other. (both set to deflectors).

I tried to use my mograph martix generated TP with the PsetData to set an initial speed and Pbubble motion. But I had a problem, the particles don’t flow outwards from the object, they just move along X (using Pvelocity > PsetData).

I having been looking at some youtube vids and it looks like I should be able to set up a TP system where particles are restricted to an objects surface… Can’t figure how to do this though!

Any pointers in the right direction would be appreciated. For now I’m just trying different methods out. I am a TP newb incase you didn’t guess!

[John Hammond]

I had never spotted the option to use a light as an emitter – that’s awsome

[John Hammond]

Hi Mike,

I have CS3 and Particular 1.5.0,

That would be great if you could send me the file, may not work but I can try it anyway.

If not, I think I can re make it from your earlier description -I am confident with the pickwhip and simple expressions. The only thing I’m unsure about is the ‘lookat function’. Is that an expression, or a button I don’t know about? If it’s an expression I think I have Dan Ebberts’ version saved on my machine which I could pilfer.

Roland – thanks, I will play with the Air/Wind options, But it’s the aiming I have real trouble with. It may work fine for this project actually, but I think Mike’s set up would be a good thing for me to have in my arsenal.

My email: burnt.toast AT ntlworld DOT com

Thanks for all the help
John

[John Hammond]

Hi there,

First thoughts are that you could build the belt out of segments. So you build one segment and have it’s position and rotation animated so it goes around in a loop. Then duplicate this a bunch of times and offset each duplicate’s timing in the timeline so they are no longer on top of each other.

Then, take your object and place it on one segment of the belt. Then parent it to that segment and it should follow and stay perpendicular.

Haven’t actually tried that out.. I’d wait around for a few more posts as there are a lot of people much more experienced than me!

If I haven’t explained it well let me know.

John

[John Hammond]

thanks, will check that out