Particle CV depends on Locator

[loked]

I shouldnt be helping my competition, but I guess you're South African, so it's alright:) J/K

In order to get the worldspace of the locator, you can just use this:


float $ws[2]=`xform -q -t -ws locatorName`;

It will save it as an array, so you could then say

float $wsX=$ws[0];
float $wsY=$ws[1];
float $wsZ=$ws[2];

Now you have float variables for all your axis.

just point the particles position to the variables and it should follow it.

Let me know if it works!

By the way, do you work for Wicked Pixels??


later:wavey:
loked

[boraddd]

i small addition to what loked said...
when you use, `particleShape1.position` you refer to its object space coordinates.. so you may want to use `particleShape1.worldPosition` instead....

[braam]

Hi Loked,

Thanks for the tip, though I got alternative way to extract value from locator's worldposition attribute. I will check your tip and keep it for future use. Where are you working?

Yep, I am working at Wicked Pixels...but how do you know?

All the best
Braam :wavey:

Hi boraddd

I use particleShape.position and it worked well in conjuction with conditional statement (If particleId = 22 then...) Thanks for your time...

cheers
Braam

[loked]

Hey Braam,

I work for and own a company called Back2Back. It's joburg based and has an alliance with Depth Animation. So basically we work from the same premises and lend each other our strengths.

Give me your email address and we can stay in contact that way.

Speak to you soon.

Cheers :wavey:

Judd (loked)

[braam]

My email address is braam@wickedpixels.com

[mark_wilkins]

It's probably better to use connections in the dependency graph rather than xform if you want Maya to update correctly whenever you move the locator. This also can speed up dependency graph evaluation a LOT if you're constraining the locator to something else.

To do this:

1) Use a matrix multiply utility node to get the product of the world space transform matrix and the local translate of the locator.

2) Connect the matrix multiply output to custom attributes on the particle node.

3) Reference those custom attributes directly in a particle expression to set a per-particle goal position for the particle. (The dynamics engine likes it better if you set goal locations rather than setting position directly.)

-- Mark

[loked]

The advantages of CGtalk:

You get Mark to answer your question and make all those that tried seem like they dont know what they're doing :beer:

Later:wavey:
loked

[mark_wilkins]

I should have added the caveat that most people would just use xform and it would work great most of the time -- it's only where there are hundreds of these things in your scene or you're really frustrated with glitches in the interactivity that you'd want to do it the other way.

-- Mark

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