Creating a flow with multiple objects skinned to Mparticles

#1

Hi guys!

I’ve been trying to make a particle flow that contains hundreds of flowers that have are controlled by a simple MParticle rig.
So far i’ve followed a very handy tutorial ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upsheC5vOk4 ) which have gotten me to the point of having a single flower that works great. I’m now trying to work out if I can somehow use this rigged particle in a system that will allow me to throw hundreds of them around, but I’ve become quite stuck!
My scripting knowledge is quite basic, I’m not sure I have any ideas how to proceed without brushing up a considerable amount, anyone have any ideas? The end of that tutorial is slightly lacking on details.

Just for the hell of it, here is a simple I test I did with multiple flowers created with a single flow. For this I had to position all of the objects that would become bones, and all of the flowers individually, then apply the skinning one by one. This really wouldn’t be practicle if I want to be spraying around loads of these. http://youtu.be/fKuQKti70nY

Thanks in advance for any advice!

#2

You wont be able to use Particle Skinner as it does not support any kind of dynamic skin creation but you can build the flowers and spawn them on the fly similar to what I have done here:

https://vimeo.com/83290958

There is a demo scene linked to in the file.

#3

Thanks! I feared this wouldn’t be all that easy. It’s a shame, this kind of thing would be amazingly useful if I could get it working somehow. Thanks for the demo scene, was useful to look at even if it isn’t quite what I’m after.

#4

Sure, no problem.

The hint I was alluding to was you could build your flower with a few pieces of simple geometry, map them with the flower map + alpha, then glue them together. You could do this for 99% of the flowers and no one would know none the better. :slight_smile:

If you have some in hero shots you could use the single high-res technique and duplicate it a few times.

#5

Ah, thanks, that completely went over my head, but sounds like a great suggestion, I’m going to give it a go, thanks again!