I am so proud I figured this out. Here’s a diagram of how I ended up setting it up in maya:
link to larger/more legible
1. particle emitter emits animated moths
2. reverse gravity pushes slightly off vertical
3. spherical vortex puts a spin on them
4. turbulence randomizes the flight a bit
5. this is a “goal” sphere- the particles will try to fit into this shape, but since they can’t (b/c they’re being disturbed by vortex + turbulence) they will kind of “swarm”
6. then goal sphere and vortex/turbulence turn off, downwards gravity turns on, and moths hit the ground.
June 3, 2008 at 8:45 pm
That’s so cool!
July 5, 2008 at 3:29 am
Hey I think your going in the right direction.
im doing something similar with bats that turn into a vampire and much more advanced, but you might want to try this out.
put an expression to the cycle start object, which is in the attributes of the particles that are emmited.
make a custum per particle float attribute called mothCyclePP
right click on the mothcyclePP and make a creation expression.
particleShape.mothCyclePP = rand(0,16);
the particleshape part is the name of the particles in your cannel box.
the numbers 0,16 can be replaced with the number of moths that it takes to make your animation. what i mean is when you instance you have to pick the objects your instancing in a sequence. the number of objects in that sequence. so if theres five then put 0,5 ok.
once you wright it in hit the edit button.
ok now you have to go back to the attributes of the particles.
go down to a tab called instancer(Geometry Replacement)
open it and theres a heading in there called
cycle options
in there theres cycle start object
hit the drop down tab and find the attribute you made mothCyclePP and change it to that.
what this does is randomise the start position of the wings as it emmits.
also you might want to actually model the moth.
the alpha channel is to easy to spot it will give it more depth.
also try putting in expressions for your turbulance on the phase X Y Z.
it will get the turbulance to look more real
ok one last thing when ever it comes to particles
the conserve value in the channel box is very powerful.
at default the value is 1
but if you were to change it to .95 or .8 to the extreem .7
Im a VFS student passin the knoledge. see ya good luck
July 5, 2008 at 3:37 am
no more stereo scopic for you lol one is good put something else in there