Animate Rotations Based On Texture

[vsidwell]

Hey All,

Boggling my mind - but I have to rotate hundreds of small items as if they were dangling in the wind.  only in the X and Y, and i may need to "gust" the wind at soem point.

I have been trying several different methods and i think a texture might be the easiest to adjust... the questiosn is how.

I dont know if I am doing it correctly - I tried using the connection editor to send the alpha out into a multiply node then into the rotations of X and Y of the object at no avail.

I have tried making hinges and using wind - but the dynamics for almost 1000 objects would be insane - not to mention placing all fo the hinges in both x and Y.

I have thought about soft bodies, but the rotation point has to be solid and I dont think it will work.

I have tried an expression - but I either get a very similar motion [ object_01.ry = 8 * sin(time * 2);] or I get random jerking movements object_01.ry = rand(8) * sin(time * 2); Very jerky. I have tried variations of this of course.

Again, I think the optimum answer is to create a controller for the multiplyier and phase of a noise node, but for the life of me I dont know how to connect the output value of the Noise map (3d) into a rotation vector.

Vince

[anthonymcgrath]

have you thought about using paint effects? Never done it before but theres a heap of presets that do geometry painting of things like nails, pins and the like. Maybe theres a way of getting a paint effects preset that loads your objects in? Then you can use the dynamics in the pfx brush options to get them swaying about?

just a thought - can you elaborate more on what kind of objects they are and where they're swinging from?

edit - actually after a quick play it seems that all its doing is switching on the draw as mesh under the pfx brush and using a profile to create a shape - dont know if you can get a proper custom mesh to be painted though.

another thought is maybe creating a particle grid - emanating some particles with no speed so they lie on the grid then using the instancer? Not sure how well they'd react to dynamics though beyond that.

[joojaa]

will solid instanced geometries with slight animation on tp do the trick for you? to be totally honest i would use particle dynamics and a ribGen but its doable. many other ways too.