Particles To Splines

[fex]

hi all,

have a simple question: i need groups of particles forming tubes

or splines, having a low number emiter and some distortion,

if its possible to connect those points with numbering or location

radius would be fine...sadly metaballs are to bloby for this effect...

plz help me

need some inspiration

thx in advance

fex

[Wolfwood]

have a simple question: i need groups of particles forming tubes

or splines, having a low number emiter and some distortion,

if its possible to connect those points with numbering or location

radius would be fine...sadly metaballs are to bloby for this effect...

19015[/snapback]

Add SOP might help. I attached a quick hip file which shows building lines from particle streams. There are a lot of other ways to go about this depending on the complexity of your particle system, the ordering of points, etc etc.

partFun.hip.gz

[3__]

& add with particle trails using stream.

-cpb

ptrails_01.zip

[polygon9000]

Add SOP might help.  I attached a quick hip file which shows building lines from particle streams.  There are a lot of other ways to go about this depending on the complexity of your particle system, the ordering of points, etc etc.

19019[/snapback]

Nice example wolfwood but how would one go about making each line generated to be unique? I like this method of generating curves out of particles but then taking it one step further i would like to 'grow' a tentacle on each curve but for that one would require each line to have its unique 0-1 parametrization right? Any tips on how to go about doing that would be helpful.

[peship]

That's Maya's way,

in Houdini you will need to Resample the curves with activated maxSegments option. This will keep the point count consistent along the time. Then you can create tentacles from any of the points you want.

If you want to slide the tentacle(s) along the original curves, then you will need to set some high Segments value inside the resample SOP - to can "fake" the poping.

Is that the case ?

[polygon9000]

Hmm here is my file..It will give u an idea as to what i am trying to achieve. Basically every curve that is spawned will be a detailed tentacle that i have modeled seperately. This is based on Wolfs earlier example of generating splines from particles.Is there is any other way i can achieve this effect of tentacles flowing along those curves generated by the particles?

partTent.hipnc

[peship]

i got you wrong - i tought you want to create branches from your original curves ...

you can try using the wireSolver to get some nice motion without involving particles,

or maybe you can combine both methods - make some decent curve shapes with particles, then extract the geometry. to split the curves as separate entities you can do two-three things:

-writing a simple loop to extract each line and to save it as separate file, then read it back in the scene

-writing a simple loop to create bunch of deleteSOP's extracting the curves one by one

-building complicated and not working network to dynamicly operates on point/primitive level

[polygon9000]

Thanks for the suggestions but unfortunately i am a noob when it comes to writing any sort of code therefore i wouldnt know how to write loops and such I can always model each curve seperately and have each tentacle creep down the surface but i was trying the above approach because the random motion of the curves is what i was looking for also it would cut down on the time required to model each curve seperately.

[sibarrick]

You could always just take your curves and add some random motion with a noise funtion using a point sop , or vop operator. No need to create some complex sim that way.

[polygon9000]

Thanks, i will try that. I wasnt exactly sure as to how many ways there are to achieve the same result. The reason i liked the particle way was because the motion looked much more fluid and dynamic and it was a challenge to pull off something like that using wolfs method.Lots to learn yet! Thanks for the input

[santosmateo]

Hello cpb, thanks for the example ptrails_01, i'm playing qhit it but i see when use a sweep and skin to create a extrude from curves created with the particles, the surface created links with other particles of others trails.

I hope you understand me , you know wath can I do?, I have a circle and yor add connects to a skin via sweep.

thank so much.

seldon

[3__]

you can try:

Polywire,

Or add a resample after add, set it to maximum segments,

then in the skin sop after the sweep set it to: groups of N primitives

with the following in the N parameter: ch("../resample1/segs") + 1

The latter option will sometimes glitch though, investigating...

[s4l4x]

Was hitting my head against this one as well. This helped:

http://forums.odforce.net/index.php?/topic/7136-foreach-and-each-sops/page__hl__foreach__fromsearch__1

.xX

[fred]

a good way is to add a new attribute derived from id on the particle..like class...trail sop the particles....ad a partition using class attribute to group them, then itter trough the groups with either a for each sop or a delete and a copy sop, inside the itteration, create a line, by copy stamping the number of points in the group to the line sop..use a point sop...first input the line sop, second input the remaining particles from the group, in position field type $TX2, $TY2, $TZ2...you can then use a noise multiplied by $PT/$NPT to make sure roots are staying in place...

Was hitting my head against this one as well. This helped:

http://forums.odforce.net/index.php?/topic/7136-foreach-and-each-sops/page__hl__foreach__fromsearch__1

.xX