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TapioKa
10-15-2002, 07:04 PM
Hey all,

Here's a question for you all.

I'm trying to simulate one cell splitting into two which is easy enough.

However, I want to make that new cell to split once, and each new cell split into a new one.

Is there a script or expression that I could create that would prevent me from hand keyframing 20 or 30 cells or nulls? I don't think that would be the most efficient way to do this.

I'm brain dead, and I can't seem to think of a solution. I tried particle spawning but that didn't work.

Any help would be appreciated.
gaggle
10-15-2002, 10:30 PM
I see two options.

There's what I know as The Brandon Way™, where you take your particlesystem that has split once, then use a Mesher object (read up on the helpfile for details on how it works), and then PArray that to get the 2nd split. I'm not.. entirely sure how you'll get your 2nd split going based on whatever geometry you end up with after meshing the first one. Tricky. But the idea is that as you convert your first split to geometry, the 2nd split can be driven by a PArray targeting the first split. Makes sense? .. hm :rolleyes:

The 2nd one is the plugin way, which involves more time and money thrown at the problem hm.. Cebas (http://www.cebas.com) has a plugin called Thinking Particles, it'll do exactly what you're describing, allowing maximum control over the damn splitting and all the tiny details.
TapioKa
10-15-2002, 11:21 PM
wow!

Very interesting approaches. Thanks, I will give that a try!:)
ajsfuxor
08-04-2004, 01:05 AM
Hey TapioKa

How did u get the cells to split in the first place?

Cheers
TapioKa
08-04-2004, 06:46 AM
Hey there ajsfuxor,

That was long ago and it's hard to remember what I did, but in the end I think I used Particle Spawn with the Life queue (Parray). That controls the timing. The only problem is that it can get pretty unmanageable quickly, as it's exponential growth. I also did a lot of compositing of mutiple layers.

On another note, seeing as that was so long ago, I would highly recommend using Particle Flow. I have not used it in a while, but I'm positive you can easily accomplish a similar effect with way more options.

Hope that helps.
ajsfuxor
08-04-2004, 07:24 AM
Thanks!

I moreso meant splitting one cell into two using geometry, and not using particles.

But I use particle flow quite a bit now, and love it.
TapioKa
08-04-2004, 04:17 PM
Well in terms of geometry you can use metaballs (I was using the Metareyes plugin) or metaparticles.
It was just a pain keyframing about 40-60 of them, but that worked for me too.

Blobmesh is also another consideration. You can create some verts, animate them and add blobmesh to them. Seems to work nicely.

Yeah, Pflow is awesome.
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