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More Particles Following a PATH!


christianl013

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Hi Guys, I have a system of Pops where particles are following several splines with a PopCurve Force node. I got everything working the way I want except for one small detail that I have not been able to figure out. The detail is how do I align the particles so that they face the direction of the spline? I don't want them to bank along the spline per se but just have an axis aligned to the spline almost like dominos or people marching in a single line along the path of the spline. It has to feel very organic which is why I am using POPs with forces and things like that as opposed to doing it in SOPs. 

I thought maybe a POP LookAt would work but I am not sure how to get the curve alignment data to POPs. 

I am sure this has been done twelve ways from Sunday but I am pretty new to Houdini and haven't able to figure it out fully as of yet. 

Anything advice on this would be awesome. Thanks!

 

Cheers,

Christian

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Thanks alot, your answers were very helpful. One thing all these example files have is one spline per scene and this is piped into the pop/dop network with the first or second context inputs. But what if I have alot of splines that I need particles to follow? Can I call pcopen on a wrangle and just point it to the spline directly or how does one go about this type of setup with multiple splines in the system.

Thanks again. 

 

Cheers, Christian

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  • 1 year later...

Yeah, in summary, you have to calculate v by importing the tangent normal of the curve and pcopen allows you to import the normals from the curve so that you can use it for velocity and in turn apply that to your POPs. 

You can also just try using the pops curve force node, it works with multiple splines as well. 

I hope that's helpful, the files linked in this thread were helpful for me as well and hopefully could be of some use to you too. 

Cheers,

Christian

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