Move points or instance geometries along surface

[xenas]

Hi all, I am trying to animate some points to move along the surface it was on.

Currently my scene setup is something like this :

Scatter > CopyToPoints 2nd input
Sphere > CopyToPoints 1st input 
CopyToPoints > pointDeform 1st input, while the 2nd input is the rest/ timeshift of the moving geo, 3rd input is the animated geo.

This is so that the points I have scattered sticked onto the (slope) surface of this moving geo. I am trying to move some of the created spheres upwards but on the surface of the slope surface it is on. How should I proceed with this?

I tried using the tutorial I saw on Entagma (Procedural Modeling Of Water Droplets - 13:30 onwards) to move some of the points upwards having grouped some of them, placing them before CopyToPoints, however that does not seems to work when outputting the result with the animated geo.

Placing them after CopyToPoints seems to have deform the sphere even further when I try to do any displacement.

 

[velk]

Hi, you could try this tutorial: https://vimeo.com/149939158

Not exactly what you are after, but I think it contains enough similarities to point you in the right direction.

[galagast]

Is this something close to what you are after?

I used the xyzdist vex function to read in closest point data, which was then fed in to an Attribute Interpolate to attach the points even on an animated geometry.

H16.5.438 Apprentice

move_along_surface.hipnc