Sprites effected by Forces?

[Tom]

I accidentally first posted this in the tutorial section ..so it is being re-posted here..

 

 

Hello-

 

Does anyone know if Sprites can be effected by Forces? I haven't been able to get that to work...

 

Question 2)

 

Does anyone know if Sprites can be contained inside another shaped object once they are emitted?

 

For example, once sprites are emitted, can they fill an invisible object so that as the sprties accumulate, a form takes shape?

 

Here is a clip from the second Narnia movie that got me thinking about this effect. It appears there is a quick cut between the particles floating and the humanlike body that they become..

 

Thanks for any feedback..

Tom

Particles.wmv

[robcat2075]

For example, once sprites are emitted, can they fill an invisible object so that as the sprties accumulate, a form takes shape?

 

in A:M it would probably be possible to do this in reverse. Emit the particles from an invisible form, render that and then reverse the footage so they look like they are going TO the form.

[Paul Forwood]

How about something like this:

SpriteTest_A00d4.mov

 

I just set the whole body to act as a sprite emitter,

made that group 100% transparent,

set a preroll long enough to build up the shape of the girl,

keyed the emitter's gravity to start effecting the sprites at about 2 seconds into the animation.

set the velocity to about 5%

 

With some tinkering you should be able to get a pretty good effect with this method. I tried a fanforce but had little success. Needs more time playing.

-------------

Edit: Increased the rate of emissions to 200 for a slightly better defined body and rotated a fan force into location at the point where I wanted the particles to move:

 

There is also an 'explode' plugin out there that might be useful for breaking a model into seperate patches, if you wanted to go that way.

SpriteTest_A00d9.mov

[robcat2075]

Edit: Increased the rate of emissions to 200 for a slightly better defined body and rotated a fan force into location at the point where I wanted the particles to move:

 

There is also an 'explode' plugin out there that might be useful for breaking a model into seperate patches, if you wanted to go that way.

 

That was pretty good! I'm impressed.

[Tom]

How about something like this:

SpriteTest_A00d4.mov

 

I just set the whole body to act as a sprite emitter,

made that group 100% transparent,

set a preroll long enough to build up the shape of the girl,

keyed the emitter's gravity to start effecting the sprites at about 2 seconds into the animation.

set the velocity to about 5%

 

With some tinkering you should be able to get a pretty good effect with this method. I tried a fanforce but had little success. Needs more time playing.

-------------

Edit: Increased the rate of emissions to 200 for a slightly better defined body and rotated a fan force into location at the point where I wanted the particles to move:

 

There is also an 'explode' plugin out there that might be useful for breaking a model into seperate patches, if you wanted to go that way.

 

 

 

Very cool..thanks for everyone's help!

 

Tom

[johnl3d]

Not exactly what you wanted but this use blobbies its an old project hopefully it still will work

 

drip.mov

 

drip.zip

[heyvern]

Here's my stab at it. I wasn't able to view the original sample movie example so I don't know exactly what effect you're after.

 

This file is similar to to what Paul did. I eliminated gravity so it's more of a "coalescing" of Thom from particles. I did have to reverse the rendered sequence for the movie. The project file is "backwards". With some more tweaking of the particle colors and transparency and fiddling with glow and other effects this could look really cool.

 

thomparticles3.mov

 

thom_particles.zip

 

-vern

[Tom]

Thanks to everyone for their help and suggestions!!

 

Here is a variation on the Narnia movie. Can't tell if the castle [and other objects] is built from sprites or ?

 

Any suggestions welcome as to how they did this...

 

http://www.adobecards.com/

 

 

Afeter it finishes loading , slide the slider all the way to the right..and then after the movie plays...slide it back to the left again..

 

Truly Amazing..

 

Tom

[HomeSlice]

the Adobecards thing could certainly be done in AM. The ad doesn't actually say the creators didn't use anything but the stock versions of the software in the Creative Suite ... so maybe they did, or maybe they used some 3rd party plugins for the physics.

 

The creation of the bridge looks like it was probably done in Flash. I don't have the website open now, but I don't remember the perspective changing all that much, so it very well might have been a 2D, or pseudo 3D, animation with perspective.

 

The creation of the castle is a great example of distracting the eye, giving the impression that magic is happening. The main focus is the vortex of cards which eventually forms the main tower. In the background, there is a lot of noise happening, but essentially it seems like they simply faded bits of the castle in slowly, behind all the chatter.

 

The fight between the ship and the castle was fun. AM's Newton plugin could handle that quite well, but you would have to spend some time on it. I wonder how Adobe did it?

 

I like the presentation concept most of all. It's like a looping DVD menu on steroids ... only there is no menu ... when you pause the movie, whatever is happening at the moment just loops until you advance it. Pretty neat.

[Paul Forwood]

Wow! That Adobecards concept is great and whoever put it all together did a splendid job!

I think the construction of the bridge and castle was done with paths. Lots of path constraints, planning and patience.

[robcat2075]

Any suggestions welcome as to how they did this...

 

http://www.adobecards.com/

 

I saw that on CGTalk a few weeks ago and the card stuff was said to be done in [one of the lesser known 3D apps], which made me wonder what any of that has to do with Adobe CS.

 

If the animation of the cards was done in Flash I'd be surprised but I've seen surprising things done in Flash. It would be more 3D than anything I've seen from Flash before.

 

Dont' presume that very much of that was automatic, whatever app they did it in.

 

You could certainly animate that in A:M.

 

Just to try it (this is not intended to replicate the full effect of the Adobe presentation) but just as proof of concept... here's some cards flying themselves into the beginnings of a bridge.

 

I used Stefen Gross' Multiple Models on Path plugin to place them along a path, then it was easy to pull them all to an offscreen locations so they could fly in. None of this is particles, but particles could be a part of a fully developed animation.

 

If I had made the face of the card an image sequence I could have made each card pick a different face so they weren't identical, but that's a story for another day.

 

bridgeMP4Med.mov

 

 

And here's a simple castle of cards (in crosseye 3D) made using the same plugin.

 

 

Other plugins could do similar work. What you see here is not the limit of what you could do in A:M, it's just a quick proof of concept. Many enhancements possible.

 

 

Edit: PRJ attached

 

Cards.zip

[NancyGormezano]

Excellent Robert!

[Tom]

Thanks for all the Help!!

 

I've downloaded the project and intend on studying it intently!

 

Thanks again!

 

Tom

[John Bigboote]

Nice job Rob! Yeah- it's ironic that Adobe would use 3D animation (The authoring of that nifty player was prolly done in Flash) to sell their applications- NONE of which are 3D and can do that kind of work!

[Paul Forwood]

Well done, Robert!

[jason1025]

I used Stefen Gross' Multiple Models on Path plugin to place them along a path, then it was easy to pull them all to an offscreen locations so they could fly in

 

Where can we find that Plugin?

 

How hard would it be to have a force blow away the castle?

[robcat2075]

I used Stefen Gross' Multiple Models on Path plugin to place them along a path, then it was easy to pull them all to an offscreen locations so they could fly in

 

Where can we find that Plugin?

 

www.sgross.com/plugins

 

 

How hard would it be to have a force blow away the castle?

sound slike a job for Newton Physics, which I am not up on.

[HomeSlice]

OK, me too. Great job Rob! Thanks for posting that.

[Tom]

Finally got around to studying the project that was posted and (probably a silly question but) how are the cards attached to the paths? I did not see any "constrain to path" instructions for any of the card models?

 

(Another silly question) How was the model called "castle outline" imported into the choreography as a "path"? I tried dragging a model into a choreography and did not see any instructions (buttons or right clicking) that would make it a path...

 

Thanks again for any help!

 

Tom

[robcat2075]

Finally got around to studying the project that was posted and (probably a silly question but) how are the cards attached to the paths? I did not see any "constrain to path" instructions for any of the card models?

 

The MMoP plugin places the cards along the path, no path constraint is needed

 

(Another silly question) How was the model called "castle outline" imported into the choreography as a "path"? I tried dragging a model into a choreography and did not see any instructions (buttons or right clicking) that would make it a path...

I got stuck on that one too, so I retraced it in the chor using the path tool. There must be a way though.

[Tom]

Finally got around to studying the project that was posted and (probably a silly question but) how are the cards attached to the paths? I did not see any "constrain to path" instructions for any of the card models?

 

The MMoP plugin places the cards along the path, no path constraint is needed

 

(Another silly question) How was the model called "castle outline" imported into the choreography as a "path"? I tried dragging a model into a choreography and did not see any instructions (buttons or right clicking) that would make it a path...

I got stuck on that one too, so I retraced it in the chor using the path tool. There must be a way though.

 

Thanks again!

 

I think the ability to sculpt a path in the modeling window would be high up there for a new features request...

 

Tom

[heyvern]

To use a path from a model with the MMop pluging you need a group. Select a spline in the model and make it a group. Click the "show more properties" dohicky for the model in the chor. Right click on the path group in that models chor shortcut and select the mmop plugin.

 

On another topic, a path constraint from a model works with actions and action objects. If you create an action you can use a path constraint on a bone to a separate spline in the same model or another model as an action object. I too wish that model paths could be accessed as path constraints the same as in an action. I don't understand why it can't be.

 

-vern

[johnl3d]

use shift key and any spline can be grabbed as a path

 

 

 

patht.mov

[Tom]

Thanks again for all the help! I was able to get it to work..cool!

 

One thing that has intrigued me would be if "Sweeper" had a time function so that you could "grow" things over time.... it would be an amazing feature. I wrote to Emilio Le Roux about it but didn't hear back from him which is too bad because I think it could be an amazing feature.

For example if "Sweeper" remembers all the parameters and cross sections and then lets you put in a time parameter, you could bring the model into Choreography and then a beautiful entwined plant or a sophisticated gearbox etc would appear out of thin air. I'm guessing there are ways to achieve this in other ways but a "time " feature would solve it in one snap.

 

Getting back to the previous project with the MMOP plugin, I was able to assemble the cards along a path and then manually pull them out of the frame as was described previously. I'm guessing that manually pulling them is the fastest way to get them to react...since It seems the MMOP doesn't allow any pose sliding (?)

 

Thanks again..

 

Tom

[robcat2075]

One thing that has intrigued me would be if "Sweeper" had a time function so that you could "grow" things over time.... it would be an amazing feature. I wrote to Emilio Le Roux about it but didn't hear back from him which is too bad because I think it could be an amazing feature.

For example if "Sweeper" remembers all the parameters and cross sections and then lets you put in a time parameter, you could bring the model into Choreography and then a beautiful entwined plant or a sophisticated gearbox etc would appear out of thin air. I'm guessing there are ways to achieve this in other ways but a "time " feature would solve it in one snap.

 

AFAIK, Sweeper makes one model, in the model window, where animation doesn't happen. At all. Sweeper wouldn't be the tool for that

 

Getting back to the previous project with the MMOP plugin, I was able to assemble the cards along a path and then manually pull them out of the frame as was described previously. I'm guessing that manually pulling them is the fastest way to get them to react...since It seems the MMOP doesn't allow any pose sliding

 

MMoP creates one keyframe per model. After that... you're up to your own wits.

 

 

Did I mention you can Shift select a whole bunch of those cards to move them all at once?

[Tom]

One thing that has intrigued me would be if "Sweeper" had a time function so that you could "grow" things over time.... it would be an amazing feature. I wrote to Emilio Le Roux about it but didn't hear back from him which is too bad because I think it could be an amazing feature.

For example if "Sweeper" remembers all the parameters and cross sections and then lets you put in a time parameter, you could bring the model into Choreography and then a beautiful entwined plant or a sophisticated gearbox etc would appear out of thin air. I'm guessing there are ways to achieve this in other ways but a "time " feature would solve it in one snap.

 

AFAIK, Sweeper makes one model, in the model window, where animation doesn't happen. At all. Sweeper wouldn't be the tool for that

 

Getting back to the previous project with the MMOP plugin, I was able to assemble the cards along a path and then manually pull them out of the frame as was described previously. I'm guessing that manually pulling them is the fastest way to get them to react...since It seems the MMOP doesn't allow any pose sliding

 

MMoP creates one keyframe per model. After that... you're up to your own wits.

 

 

Did I mention you can Shift select a whole bunch of those cards to move them all at once?

 

 

Thanks for the help!

 

Tom

[Tom]

To use a path from a model with the MMop pluging you need a group. Select a spline in the model and make it a group. Click the "show more properties" dohicky for the model in the chor. Right click on the path group in that models chor shortcut and select the mmop plugin.

 

On another topic, a path constraint from a model works with actions and action objects. If you create an action you can use a path constraint on a bone to a separate spline in the same model or another model as an action object. I too wish that model paths could be accessed as path constraints the same as in an action. I don't understand why it can't be.

 

-vern

 

Thanks for the detailed explanation..I couldn't have figured the process out without it!

Tom

[Tom]

use shift key and any spline can be grabbed as a path

 

 

 

patht.mov

 

 

Great Tip!

 

Thanks!

 

Tom