L System Lightning with origin and target

[Richard Culver]

Hi,

I'd like to know how you can use an L system lightning preset to have the bolts of lightening target deforming geometry.

What I have is a device that is attached to the arm and it will send out electric shards. I plan to parent a few L systems to the arm device and have them sending shocks to the arm, and hopefully be able to climb up the arm as well.

Someone has done something similar here:

http://pepefx.blogspot.com/2013/05/in-this-nth-experiment-i-wanted-to.html [pepefx.blogspot.com]

But I have no idea how he set it up as he does not go into enough details for my level of Houdini knowledge.

In my example the arm apparatus will likely come in as FBX with animation so it will have motion I can parent to.

The arm will be a deforming object that will come in from Maya as Alembic. So I have a previously created animation I plan to use as the source and target motion for this effect. Hope that is clear enough to understand.

I simply chose L system as a seemingly easy place to start.

I also found this:

http://www.sidefx.com/forum/topic/13822/ [sidefx.com]

But it is 8 years old and it seems to assume certain things I don't know.

Sadly I kind of need a blow by blow to figure this all out. This is probably a tad bit over my head. But I'd like to get it sorted.

Any pointers will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[rbowden]

http://forums.odforce.net/topic/12360-approaches-to-lightning-in-houdini/

I haven't opened any of the links in that thread yet but, it sounds like it is something that you are looking for. Tackle this thing in two parts. Get the look of the look of the lightning down and then work on getting it rayed down to the surface.

Just doing a search in google for lightning here on the boards, many topics about the subject came up. I suggest reading through them. Also, just because a file is 8 years old, doesn't mean the concepts aren't the same.