Bendytoons Posted February 5, 2006 Share Posted February 5, 2006 I'm working on rain, and came up with what seemed a clever solution. the rain is streaks, and the splashes on the chair are a flock of rain drops. After much frustration I finally got it working...until I closed and reopened the file. Now only one drop in the flock shows up. I know flocking has been a source of frustration to others, but anyone have advice. Is this just not a playable feature right now? Also anyone ever get Flock Surface constraint to work? I am attaching movie and file rain.mov Rain.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KenH Posted February 5, 2006 Share Posted February 5, 2006 Now that's pure class. I'll take a look at the files. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Forwood Posted February 5, 2006 Share Posted February 5, 2006 What version of A:M are you using? It works well in 12s. Also make sure that you have particles turned on. Thats a clever use of flocking! Edit: I haven't tested your project. Just my own tests with flocking. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bendytoons Posted February 5, 2006 Author Share Posted February 5, 2006 What version of A:M are you using? It works well in 12s. Also make sure that you have particles turned on. Thats a clever use of flocking! I'm in 12s. I'll try again and report it if it's still repeatable. Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KenH Posted February 5, 2006 Share Posted February 5, 2006 There's nothing happening in v13 a5. Though it could be me not knowing what the hell is going on. Edit: There's something strange going on in the "Rain Thingy" object. I can't get into shaded view by pressing the 0 key. Although I don't know if it would be a valid patch....even making a new patch doesn't do anything. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bendytoons Posted February 6, 2006 Author Share Posted February 6, 2006 There's nothing happening in v13 a5. Though it could be me not knowing what the hell is going on. Edit: There's something strange going on in the "Rain Thingy" object. I can't get into shaded view by pressing the 0 key. Although I don't know if it would be a valid patch....even making a new patch doesn't do anything. I made it invisible. Just click the little eye icon next to it in the pws and you should see it again. The file doesn't work n 13 for me either, and when I try to adjust settings I get a series of realtime rendering errors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dhar Posted February 6, 2006 Share Posted February 6, 2006 Excellent work! Fascinating. This is helpful to the A:M community. Thanks for sharing. Could you describe what's going on, how you did it? A short tute? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnl3d Posted February 6, 2006 Share Posted February 6, 2006 Great idea but if you want another approach here is one that has worked and it even works in the current alpha It uses a darktree material that is animated to translate in the y direction overtime [attachmentid=14167] the project is in 13 alpha trying to see if the displacement would help I included the darktree material [attachmentid=14168] afxb.mov fxb.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dre4mer Posted February 6, 2006 Share Posted February 6, 2006 I love the effect Bendytoons! I'm working on a project right now that calls for rain and I was going to resort to just post rain in After Effects... but this is very promising, gret work! Thanks for sharing the file! -Ethan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bendytoons Posted February 6, 2006 Author Share Posted February 6, 2006 Excellent work! Fascinating. This is helpful to the A:M community. Thanks for sharing. Could you describe what's going on, how you did it? A short tute? You should be able to suss it out pretty quick by looking at the file, but here's a quick description: 1. The rain streaks are just a Streak particle system. Actually two streak systems. One has a small amount of bounce, and the other is set to die on impact. These systems create all the streaks and all the little streaky bounces. 2. The drops hitting the chair are a flock system. The members of the flock are basically sprites, but I built the model. It is a square patch with a seven frame animated splash cycle. The version I posted actually uses a 90 frame cycle where all the frames but five are black, I later realized you need only one black frame at each end. I created an action for the splash which waits 85 frames and then runs thru the sprite cycle in six. You must show all properties when animating the action because you are animating the Frame setting of the image that is decaled onto the splash sprite, and it is normally hidden. I dropped that action onto the shortcut to splash under the particle system and set the max action offset to 85. Now the flock members animate at random intervals over the full 90 frames. Don't forget to turn all the forces in the flock system and the choreography off. Otherwise the flock will fly away. I turned the Y force to -100 in the streak system so the rain would still fall down. That's it. I think the key here is that the splashes sell the rain drops and vice versa. You see the action of rain falling and you see the action of splashes, and your brain ties it all together into a complete action even though they are unrelated. Ben Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KenH Posted February 6, 2006 Share Posted February 6, 2006 I wonder if they would be effected by motion blur. Can't test it. If yes, it may add to the effect.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bendytoons Posted February 6, 2006 Author Share Posted February 6, 2006 I wonder if they would be effected by motion blur. Can't test it. If yes, it may add to the effect.... The splashes will not be affected by motion blur. This is because there are five frames of action with nothing between, so frame 65.33 is identical to frame 65 and frame 65.99. Actually the render I posted used was render with a 5 or 3 frame multipass. It blurs the streaks, shadows, and horizon, but not the splashes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bendytoons Posted February 6, 2006 Author Share Posted February 6, 2006 Is anyone else who has downloaded this having problems with it? I cannot get it to relaod properly, nor can I get it recreated. I tried in v13 and any attempt to tweak fall off of the flock results in a "circularity found" warning. and if I try removing the action from the flock any subsequent attempt to pick that action results in "error #12" danger, danger. I'm puttng rain on hold for a bit while I see if I can figure the flocking issues. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Forwood Posted February 6, 2006 Share Posted February 6, 2006 Well, I have tried your project in 12.0s and 13 alpha 6. I don't see any particles in A:M 13, just the chair. In 12.0s I can see the streaks and a square emitter, or something, but no splashes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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