Tom

Thank you! Very smart to turn off particle collision and leave object collision on!! I never would have thought of that! Thanks again! Tom

Hello Hashers- I had an idea of leaves being emitted as sprites and I wanted those leaves to swirl in a curlicue past the camera. I created a curlicue model as a guide for the sprites to follow and made it 80% transparent so I could see if it was working, and if it did work, I would make the guide 100% transparent for the final render. I made the sprites react to collisions and thought I set everything properly. I even had an animated force fanning the sprites inside the tunnel. The force moved one leaf but the others stayed behind. Unfortunately all the leaves glommed up at the beginning of the "wind tunnel guide" as you can see from the video. I wonder if there is in fact a way to direct the path of moving sprites along specific areas? Many thanks for any help! Tom WindTunnel.mp4 WindTunnel.prj

cool... If I come up with any interesting I will post it! Thanks! Tom

Interesting videos! It occurred to me that the "GreenGas" project you created a while back looked very cool. If you could somehow have the streaks hanging in the air then a vortex force could swirl them around as a character walked by. The only thing is how would you get those streaks to "hang in the air" long enough? Maybe have a very slow emittor on the ground like mist rising? Maybe a Saturday Live Chat topic?

Nice flash light effect... So if you have a misty graveyard scene and Frankenstein (or Thom) walks through it, the mist will not part or swirl around the character? That will have to be done with some sort of particle setup?...and I have no idea how that would be achieved...

This is off topic to what we were discussing above..... ...but I was playing around with Dust,Mist and Steam this morning and it looks like none of those are affected by "Forces". Is that a correct assumption? I'm guessing that "Forces" need some sort of particle to affect for "Forces" to work... I'm thinking about animating "wind" and I'm guessing it needs to be some sort of particle for it to animate...(and be visible) Do you know if anyone has done a "wind" project? Tom

Thanks for posting! An interesting comparison. In the Disney animation school I've heard that the fledgling animators have to make a bouncing, 1) Bowling ball 2) Basketball 3) Ping pong ball to show they understand the significance of spacing. It might be a fun exercise to try adapting the parameters on those three balls to match the Disney test. Thanks again. Tom

Thanks again to Rob for hosting another session which upped my AM IQ! I received a nice reply from Steffen with an updated version of the leaf blowing project using Bullet. His reply is shown below with his attached new project! From Steffen- "Select the Choreography , than -> Plugins -> Wizards -> Add Bullet Constraints to multiple models -> in the plugin dialog set the Hulltype to Box and hit Select all , hold down ctrl and left mouse button on Shortcut to Ground (to deselect the ground) and than create . This will create the needed bulletconstraints for the models . Than You can simulate. Maybe you need to modify some values for the constraints . This can be done with another plugin . Selected chor -> -> Plugins -> Wizards -> Modify Bullet Constraints on multiple models" Blow_start1.prj Leaves1A.tga

All excellent suggestions! Will have to play around with those ideas... (That errant dollar bill sticking behind must be due to inflation!😄) I know he is very busy but I did write to Steffen and asked if he was able to update that leaf project ......because it is SOOOOOO Cool! What he had going on with those Forces is remarkable. Thanks again, Tom

Many thanks for taking the time to troubleshoot this! I might contact Steffen and see if he is able to clarify how it would be done in the new build. Tom

Yes, the one I posted was re-saved in v19. I found the original zip file and it was from 2006 !!!.(attached) It still beggars the question of how can a v19 user recreate the simulation that was set up? Or does a person need to start from scratch? leaf.zip

Once again the "Wizard of AM" comes to the rescue!! I found the simple scatter plugin but so far it has crashed on me a couple of times (so I must be doing something wrong). Two questions: 1) Do you know if there is any documentation for that plugin? 2)When the leaf project was posted there were two versions. One fully simulated and one without. I have attached the leaf blowing project without any simulations created. Do you know the procedure for creating that leaf simulation? I tried right clicking and everything related to simulations was ghosted. I tried selecting the leafs in the choreography but they were not pickable. Hmmmm. Many thanks! Tom Blow_start.prj

Hello- Was studying this older project that someone posted and enjoyed the leaf and force interaction. I tried deconstructing the Project but was unable to determine how the many leaves were placed in the Choreography. I'm assuming it wasn't done manually but can't figure out how it was done. Does anyone know? Many thanks for any insights. Tom LeafSwirl.mp4 LeafZip.zip

Hadn't even thought of trying to flip the baked particles. As you said, filming it straightforward and reversing in another program might be the easiest way to go... Thanks!

I had an interesting idea and that is , what would it look like in reverse. Particles coming together to form something. I took the render into After Effects and reversed the order. I don't think having particles come together to form specific models would be easily doable in AM. Reverse.mp4 Does anyone know whether it is doable as shown in the new video? Or is the best way to render normally and reverse the frames like was done here? If it was doable, there could be some interesting scenes of things exploding and coming together while skipping the step of exporting specific frames,reversing them and then re-composting them afterwards. Tom

Looks good!

Good troubleshooting on the Spade color issue! What's nice is that multiple materials can be dropped on top of groups for interesting results.Can't wait to play with this...

Many thanks!

Rob- I unzipped the S_to_Streaks project and this (attached) error message popped up. I tried clicking through it but it just keeps cycling this message with different ".pai" files. And then starts at the beginning again. I don't think it will even give me the chance to un-bake the files. Do you have any suggestions? Thanks, Tom

Many thanks again to Rob for another invigorating tutorial! Can't wait to study the S to Streaks project and go over the recorded session. Animation Master is really an astounding program (when explained by an expert!)... ....and dollar for dollar is one of the best buys out there. Tom

Thinking up one idea (but probably not a great one) and that is use some sort of substitution system to swap objects mid stream. Looking forward to hearing feedback Saturday.

If I stump Rob...that will be a first!😊

Hello- I noticed this effect in the fantastic animated clip entitled "The Tale of the Three Brothers" from a Harry Potter's film. Her dress shatters as the character dies and if you notice, her dress shatters as small rectangles. My question is, is there a way to have a model shatter but customize the shapes of the exploding pieces? Let's say that you want the dress to explode like the different suits of a card deck (attached)...is that possible? Is there some way to pre-cut the exploding parts (with a cookie cutter map or...?) (Maybe a Live Saturday chat topic?) Thanks for any help! Tom Shatter.mp4

OK... Many thanks! I did send a private message expanding on the Sweeper feature we were discussing yesterday. Would love to hear your thoughts on how difficult it would be to implement. Best, Tom