Thinking Particles - Leaves

[littledevil]

given that you are talking about a flat plane as the ground :

1. create a second particle group and a second alignment node
2. on the collision event switch the particle group for the given particles
3. adjust the aligment of these particles as wanted with the new alignment node
4. this will result in some sort of snapping behaviour - won't look good

if you have non planaer floor/surface/whatever, you could do the following
(or as an alternative to the ugly snapping) :

1. also switch the particle group on the collsion event, but let the collison
occur with a large offset and then animate the last frames with mograph/
dynamics solution.

or

2. get the collsion position and sample the nearest surface point of your
floor object, get the surface normal of the connected polygon and align
your particle to it. you could use the system preset GetNearetestPoint for
this, but it only calculates the nearest vertex despite its name. however,
this will be enough for your task.

i do not really understand why you do not use mograph for this :)

[teleliq]

You could also try to set up a second alignment. Then you can use a mix node to blend in the second alignment, when the leaves come closer to the surface.

Cheers
Simon

[fuat]

you could also set up your own alignment matrix with an upvector.
then you wont have that gimbal lock problem.
ciao
fuat

[JayCox]

Thank you guys for your reply :)

@Little_Devil : Thanks for your input, but what you are suggesting will not work for a movie. I have a camera watching this happen and I cannot animate it with mograph because I would have to animate each leaf seperatly and then I can just keyframe the entire thing...

@fuat : I do not really have a gimbal lock problem I mainly have a problem with it snapping...

@Teleliq/Simon: That sounds like a good idea... Could you tell me how to set it up because I kinda got stuck once I created the mix node^^
What do I connect with what?

I am attaching a screenshot of my current set up which works well until it hits the floor... at the moment it just sticks in the floor
or
if I connect the pDeflector event with second pAlignment on and of course pPass to pAlignm. Particle it snaps...


Thank you very much!

[fuat]

in order to mix data you have to get data (PGet Data), output the channel you want (Alignment), mix it, and then set the data back (-> PSet Data into Alignment Port).
hope that helps.
fuat

[littledevil]

Thank you guys for your reply :)
@Little_Devil : Thanks for your input, but what you are suggesting will not work for a movie. I have a camera watching this happen and I cannot animate it with mograph because I would have to animate each leaf seperatly and then I can just keyframe the entire thing...


not sure how this is meant, but you just drag the new particle group into a mograph
cloner object. it will inherit the particle data. i also not unerstand why you would have
to animate each object seperatly. it would be a one mograph object and one leaf object
an you particle group/cloud as the starting point. you won't have to do any keyframing at
all, mograph /dynamcis are just another particle system.

[JayCox]

@fuat : Thanks ! Will try that tomorrow :)

@little_Devil : Ok then I probably misunderstood you or don't quite get how mograph and TP work together :) Will try it tomorrow too!

Thanks alot :)