Flocking and Particle settings

[kem]

I have a butterfly model. It has an action. I want to create a flock of them. Well I found flocking, it appears in Chor in when you're in muscle mode and right click on a character/ under NEW/Flocking. I chose "birds." Got that far and played with settings, etc. Bounding circle appears around character (light falloff?) but the characters do not appear as a flock...only one character -- I expected to see 15 of them appear, but nothing... obviously I'm doing something wrong here. Any help out there?

Thanks,

Kem

[robcat2075]

Flocking... I'm not sure. Rodney is the flocking guru.

 

Particles you can toggle on and off with Shift-8

[kem]

Thanks, Robcat. I'll try the toggle trick and see if it makes a difference.

[kem]

Hmmm...I tried the toggle trick. Now, no matter where I place my cursor and click, the software crashes... I think I'll have to start a new project and import all the models, etc. and try again.

[kem]

Update...I deleted the "shortcut to birds" and it stopped the crashing. Now to figure out how to make flocking work. I have searched both the manual and the technical reference and I am left wondering. I now wonder if the way I modeled the butterflies has an effect on the flocking system. The bodies are normal spline shapes, the wings are flat spline shapes with cookie cutter decals. Is the flocking system not able to create a flock if cookie cutter decals are used?

 

Rodney, if you're out there, Robcat says you're the flocking guru. Any guidance would be awesome. Thanks.

[robcat2075]

the decal shouldn't matter.

If you are adventurous, try installing an older version like v15 or v16 and see if following the tut gets an expected result.

 

copy your master0.lic file to the new version folder.

[kem]

I do have an older version and it's on an older mac and it works, but it is slow...I've decided to go ahead and create instances "by hand" dragging models into the Chor, attaching the individual paths and actions...tedious, but it'll work. hopefully (and I realize you guys are crazy busy) this will be repaired in a future version... Thanks for the suggestions.

[robcat2075]

Can you post a sample PRJ of something that should work but doesn't?

[robcat2075]

Kem, I tried the first few steps of "flying south" in TAoAM and got visible flocking.

 

Load this and tell me if it shows anything

 

FlyingSouth04.prj

[kem]

Thank you for helping, Robcat, It opens and runs BUT whenever I click on the objects folder in the Projects workspace (to explore what you did), it crashes. In fact if I click on practically anything it crashes... I look forward to your ideas, insights and advice.

[robcat2075]

Do a Help>Reset Settings

 

If that doesn't help then we should screencam this crash and make a bug report out of it. It could very well be a Mac-only bug. We should try to get another mac user to try it.

[largento]

I just tried it on the iMac at work and I didn't run into any problems. I'm using v19c. It opens and runs and renders. I even opened up the properties in the PWS and changed the number of birds from 20 to 40 and no crash.

 

It should be pointed out that this iMac at work was the heftiest one they could get at the time it was bought: It's got a 4.2 GHz Intel Core i7 processor with 32GB of 2400 MHz DDR4 RAM and a Radeon Pro 580 graphics card with 8 GB. It's running macOS 10.13.5 (High Sierra.)

[kem]

Reset settings did the trick!!!....Thank you Robcat, and Largento. (P.S. largento, my mac is fairly hefty, too 4 GHz, 32 GB ram, Intel Core i7 *smiles* It was operator error, which I suspected.....) I feel a bit ecstatic now and I think I'll do some animation!!

[robcat2075]

Reset settings did the trick!!!....

 

Hurray!

 

Now I wonder what "setting" was the problem. That would be a bug worth reporting if it can ever be singled out.

[kem]

Good question. Here's what just happened: I opened my project and looked around, made a few adjustments to the animation, then I closed the project and opened your flocking project. I looked around and all was okay until I clicked on the birds object folder and it crashed. I tried to re start TAoAM and now it wants me to register all over again... but not really...I put my name in the appropriate place and it restarted, of course looking like I just started it the first time ever. So I guess resting really resets it. Hopefully no more crashing...I'll let you know.

[kem]

okay, I'm back. After resetting and opening your flying south04.prj, I now cannot click on the objects folder without a crash....restarted computer, same... and now I can't open my project i was working on without a crash...

[kem]

and now it's working again...confused, bewildered, and curious, but not giving up. I on a deadline and will do any workaround I have to, like making multiple instances of butterflies VS flocking. I think I must have done something weird in the settings, don't know what it was but I'll keep trying after I finish this project. Thanks for all the advice and help.

Kem

[serg2]

 

FlyingSouth05.prj

FlyingSouth05.prj

[Rodney]

My guru status is diminishing....

 

Sorry I wasn't here for you kem but glad to see you got everything sorted. Good things we have lots of guru types hanging out around here.

Not that it matters much for you now.. .but for others looking in....the number 1 reason most flocking fails is that the user forgets (or doesn't know) to turn particles on.

I'll guess the number 2 reason is not understanding the process of setup such as how to drag/drop the model to create the flock.

For older computers it can be useful to set the flocking setting 'Draw as Dots' to 'on' until absolutely needed.

Nowadays with more RAM on the average computer that's less of a problem so 'Draw as Dots' can usually be left off..

[kem]

Thank you, Rodney. As for the turning off and on of particles, the "shift 8" may work fine but isn't there an indicator somewhere that shows you the status? I don't know where to look.

[robcat2075]

Kem,

 

Go to View, Toolbars and enable "Draw"

 

That has a button you can use instead of Shift-8 and also shows the current ON/OFF state.

[kem]

Thank you. It's probably in one of the manuals but i failed to locate it.

[kem]

When I go to views, this is how my tool bars is displayed - grey.

[kem]

The beautiful thing about TAoAM is that the more you explore and tinker, the more you discover. I clicked on the gray area of the toolbar at the top that was already displayed and found "draw"...it appeared at the bottom of my screen... Beautiful!

[kem]

Okay, I got Flocking to work...sort of. I got the birds flocked (12 of them) but only the actual bird is flapping (using his action) The others are just gliding, no wing action, plus as the go around the circular path, they spin and point backwards. What did I forget or miss? Plus, even with a settings reset, if I click on "jitters" it crashes...

[robcat2075]

If you want to send me the PRJ in a PM I'll take a look.

[kem]

empty

[kem]

You might also see if when you click in the Chor2 in properties, the click distance (at 20, but wanted to adjust) it crashes... it crashes if I click on objects in the properties window...kinda flummoxed.