problem deforming particles?

[aracid]

hey all

in a nut shell im basically looking for an effect that occurs when hard object hits a wall of bricks/tiles. however i dont want them too shatter separately or fall away, i just want them to look like they cling to the motar and large clumps dent in and out - this part works!

however

ive created a layer tiles or little bricks using a copy SOP with a grid of particles(used for a later effect) and a simple box to represent the tiles/bricks. then before that i have a point SOP to slightly randomise their orientation, and use the PIC funtion to call a COP that i fade in as a Y offset to displace the particle grid - this works well until the particles start to move and influence the bounding box info.

i use pic ("../img/img1/file", $BBX, $BBZ, D_CLUM)

is there any way i can either use another objects Bounding info within the PIC function or somehow replace the $BBX/$BBZ with a value that will produce similiar results- obviously not being effected by the BB growing and shrinking.

i know one can use a $BBX2 for the second input on a point SOP, but that requires having the same geo info, and that doesnt really help either - unless somehow i can manually change the BB info.

anyways, any ideas would be awesome.

thanks in advance

aracid

[Mario Marengo]

Hi aracid,

You could try replacing $BBX and $BBZ with two calls to bbox()

/ -> exhelp bbox
float bbox (string SOP, float type)
        This function will return bounding box information for a SOP.  The
        type can be one of D_XMIN, D_YMIN, D_ZMIN, D_XMAX, D_YMAX, D_ZMAX,
        D_XSIZE, D_YSIZE, or D_ZSIZE for the corresponding values of the
        bounding box.

... and feed it a sop whose bounding box doesn't change and so serves as a static bounding reference.

Haven't tried this... just thinking out loud

Cheers!