particles following a spline

[JoelOtron]

Doing exactly the same thing right now--NOTA is the way to go.

Srek has sme presets on his site that allow for variation via the PPfollow node set to spring--but wasnt working for me either. Depends a lot on the spline you use for the particles to fllow.

You can also make an invisible tube that you emit into--and use it as a collison object for the rbcs--but can be a clunky less controllable method..

Nota has not failed me for this and is very controllable.

http://www.tarabella.it/c4dbeta/index.php

[howzit]

i have been dealing with this a lot lately too. This will not work with TP. You will get very very close, but in the end there is a lack of control. I am sure with a good knowledge of Xpresso, you can add a few hundred nodes to make it work. But when you get them to move free enough, the problem comes to moving them at a nice speed (keeping up with the camera), even if you add range mappers to the spline points going to the spring speed, and set the spline to unifrom and boost up the number it doesnt work. If it does, the you lose the particles following the spline correctly around sharp corners.
just a tip, i found the OLD Xpresso (v8) follow spline setup a million times better than the new V9 follow spline setup ones. try searching around for the old follow spline setup. The Pstorm will not have as much control, i.e particle rate and all that, but you may be able to borrow the follow spline part of the old set-up. The one i found to work closest is one that has several range mapping nodes going to many different things. Im not too versed in Xpresso, just giving you part of what i went through.

in the end i hand animated everything.

Another option, may be to use the non TP emmiter. Get the TDEM plug-in, which i think is free, this will give you very good control over the particles, better than TP It gives you very good controls over speed and how freely they move. I did MANY MANY hours of research on TP follow spline, and have every file on the Bonkers site, and many more but no luck.

NOTA seems to be good like JoelD said, but i have never used it. either hand animate, use non TP emiiter with TDEM, or NOTA.

If you do get TP to work, please let us know.

P.S I did find out that the attract-repulse node in CPT might work really well for this, i think Darf constructed it for this very purpose. But CPT is not available

[JoelOtron]

Does TDEM still work in 9.5? havent touched that one in years. Very cool particle plugin.

[howzit]

TDEM works no problem in 9.5.

[konomos]

I looked at TDEM, but I'm not sure I understand how that will help give me some variance of a particle along the spline. Maybe I'm crazy...

[BeccoUK]

Next Limits RealFlow3 could do this very nicely for you. Unlike Maxwell Render this product works (the recent C4D connection plugin needs improvement but the older one functions well enough in Cinema 8.5/9.0/9.5.

With this you could model some low poly proxy blood cells in Cinema and a blood vessel structure. Transfer this to RealFlow3 and use its particle system and dynamics engine to drive the cells along the blood vessels. I imagine this has the possibility to be very realistic. Transfer the dynamics date back to Cinema 4D and render the animation as you see fit.

A useable evalution version (for non commercial purposes) is available on request from Next Limit:

http://www.nextlimit.com/realflow/index.html

[howzit]

I looked at TDEM, but I'm not sure I understand how that will help give me some variance of a particle along the spline. Maybe I'm crazy...

i am sure you are not crazy all the time :p
here is a test i threw together in 2min.
notice that each particle has its own rotation, and has its own random movement as it moves along with the group.
http://www.transistorstudios.com/users/chris/particle_spline_follow.mov
TDEM has the advantage of being able to make the particles go as fat or as slow as you want, but keep the same kind of movement on the spline, this is very hard with TP

[JoelOtron]

Thanks howzit.

I used to use TDEM for that kind of thing a long ime ago--but for some reason it got lost in the shuffle somewhere between R7 and R9.

I used to have example file that were once available on the remotion site--but they are gone.

Do you (or anyone) still have the zip files with the TDEM examples? I kind of forgot how to use it and the files always help make it clearer.

[konomos]

howzit- that looks like exactly what I need. I went to remotion site to get TDEM and when I pulled the zip from there onto my MAC, I couldn't find any files that my computer would read other than the manual and other read-me's. Any suggestions?

Thanks everyone for helping me. I'm in a bit of a time crunch, so this is very much appreciated. My animation is for Patient Education, so you are doing a good deed for others as well!

[howzit]

heres the file i did a few minutes ago. sorry i dont have the original files, i am new to all of this myself.


http://www.transistorstudios.com/users/chris/TDEM_example.c4d.zip

if you double click the little green triangle with fizz on it, the settings box will come up. Here you can adjust the speed at which you want the particle to travel in the Source tab. I usually leave the Dest/Path tab alone, and the texture tab alone. But in the Coll/Grav tab, you can adjust the Particle radius. This will detrmine how much each particle will collide with one another (or the force field of each particle), thus giving a more "free" movement (and the random movement of each particle). play with gravity as you will. Make sure "Particle Particle Collision" is checked.
the manual should be in the plug-in folder. I think you can get really crazy with this if you use an animated texture with noise and stuff to control speed. this will make them really look random, and they will have random speeds as they go. this might be what the texture tab does, but im just guessing.

last note, you have to type in the names of the splines, its not drag and drop. you can have more than one spline. look at the numbering of each spline aswell, this has also to be set up. this way, you can duplicate your spline and change some of the points, this way, a few particle will look like they have their own little stream with-in the stream you know. its pretty easy to use tho. it only took a few minutes to figure out.
oh one more thing, i love the old skool emmiter, becuase it is very user friendly comapered to TPStorm. so you can start stop you emmiter easily, the rate, life and all of that no sweat

[konomos]

let's just call me crazy. I opened your C4D file and it said I was missing the TDEM plugin. UNfortunately it didn't tag along with your file! Any suggestions on how to get ahold of it? I've tried the .zip and.sit and neither have usable files on there.
thanks!

[howzit]

howzit- that looks like exactly what I need. I went to remotion site to get TDEM and when I pulled the zip from there onto my MAC, I couldn't find any files that my computer would read other than the manual and other read-me's. Any suggestions?

Thanks everyone for helping me. I'm in a bit of a time crunch, so this is very much appreciated. My animation is for Patient Education, so you are doing a good deed for others as well!
EDIT: just saw your post,
hey bro, just wanted to ask, the zip file you mentioned, there shouldnt be anything other than the manual and the read-me files you can read. After un-zipping the file, throw the TDEM folder in the plug-ins folder, which is in the Applications >> MAXON >> Cinema 4D R9 >> plugins folder. Re-launch Cinema and TDEM will show up in the plug-ins pull-down menu. That file will then work. Sorry for saying all of this if you already know it.

[konomos]

awesome. that did the trick and your example file is working perfectly. Thank you so much for your patientce and help. Hopefully one day I'll be in a position to pass that on.

[onostuff]

Hi All,
Thanks Howzit for the sample file. I've just spent a good part of the last 2 days trying to get Tdem to work properly for a project I'm doing, but it's pretty painful. I keep getting lockups (spinning beach ball) in C4D while trying to make changes in the Tdem dialoge window; seems to happen about 60% of the time. Being sure to set my timeline back to 0 seems to help a little (so changes won't try to update to existing particles on screen), but not much. Perhaps because I am generating poly objects as particles is part of the problem, it does for sometimes. Howzit's exapmple file plays fine as is, but when I start makeing changes to the settings, I start getting problems. I've been able to make some progress, but after dozens of restarts.
Is any one else having a similar problem? The Regular particle seem fine, as do the TP tests I've been doing lately.
I'm using TDEM 1.5b2, C4D 9.521 and am on a Mac G5 with 3.5 gigs of ram.

Thanks
Patrick

[howzit]

it will lock up yes, either TP or any particle system emmiting geometry. pretty much any machine will lock up. what i do is on the emmiter turn off show object and you will get real time feedback, make a some adjustments, turn show object back on, do a preview (Render > make preview) to see what it looks like.

[onostuff]

Hi
Thanks for your reply. I think this is a different problem though, as it happens a lot with the geometry turned off, etc.. Very weird. Often any slight change to any of the TDEM inputs will seem to do it. Now it doesn't seem to be accepting my changed destination inputs (still shows the "linked" yellow line to the original target, even though I eliminated it. The typed name in the Destination shows the new correct name though. I'll try download another copy of TDEM and see if that helps.
Are you running Mac or PC?

Thanks
P.

[howzit]

are you using TDEM with XPRESSO? if so then that is too advanced for me....

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