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View Full Version : TP and Deformers - can they be friends?

Levvv
05-21-2006, 01:14 PM
Hi there people,

The wonderful world of TP has got me pulling my hair out again. I have some particles traveling across the surface of a 10x10poly plane. As the little buggers are floating along I want to bend the plane and have the particles continue to stick. Turns out that TP doesn't honour deformers due to them not actually deforming the true mesh. I did not think of this in the planning stages and now hit upon this massive stumbling block.

Considering how many planes I want to do this to, deforming it via PLA is going to be too time consuming (if this would even fix the problem). Is there a way I can get TP to see the object AFTER the deformer has done it's job - especially seeing the deformation is animated?

I even thought of making the plane a box so the particles are inside, then deforming. Unfortunately same thing. Fizz doesn't see the deformation either as I was trying to use it's collision system to contain the particles inside the bending box - not surprising seeing Fizz uses TP.

Any way I can wrestle moving particles onto an object as the object deforms throughout the animation...or is this black magic stuff?

Any tips much appreciated.
tcastudios
05-21-2006, 01:58 PM
The only quick help I can give is to use a xpresso setup called D2P (Deformed To Points).
Its a setup based in info from the manual.

Works like this:
Copy your mesh (SOURCE) minus the deformer. The Copy is now the TARGET.
Drop them in the coresponding fields of D2P and use the copy for your TP sticking.

I made a quick test using TP collision and it worked fine with some offset of the collison to not have any particled pass the mesh.

Check it out at:
http://homepage.mac.com/tcastudios/index.html
then ->xfiles -> D2P

Cheers
Lennart
MJV
05-21-2006, 03:47 PM
Wow. I didn't know you could do that. It also works with Mograph's Displace Deformer. Nice trick. Thanks a lot tcastudios.

The only quick help I can give is to use a xpresso setup called D2P (Deformed To Points).
Its a setup based in info from the manual.

Works like this:
Copy your mesh (SOURCE) minus the deformer. The Copy is now the TARGET.
Drop them in the coresponding fields of D2P and use the copy for your TP sticking.

I made a quick test using TP collision and it worked fine with some offset of the collison to not have any particled pass the mesh.

Check it out at:
http://homepage.mac.com/tcastudios/index.html
then ->xfiles -> D2P

Cheers
Lennart
Per-Anders
05-21-2006, 08:24 PM
you can also use the matrix object in the MoGraph module to do this (just use a tp source) then it iwll deform whilst retaining the orthagonal nature of the particles, i.e. you wont get wonky particle meshes when you clone on the matrix object. just deform both the mesh and the matrix object and you're away.
Levvv
05-22-2006, 01:45 AM
Ah very nice. It'll create duplicates of every object (there's lots) but to be honest I think that won't make much difference as long as I can still animate the deformers as this seems to do. Excellent stuff!!!

Thank you.
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05-22-2006, 01:45 AM
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