Moving Objects Tangent To A Specified Point

[sheriffcicada]

Hey Guys-

I am workin on a fake esplosion animator. I have a point <>, the blast origin, and several other points <> etc... and I want to move those objects away from that point. I was hoping to do this without expressions, but if so, I would want to have additional keyframe control. Anyways, hope this makes sense. I have looked up the equations and it looks like I need a 3d tangent. I have tried the "angle" function but I am not the best at trig. I eventually get it , but it takes a bit. Just some coersion toward a usable approach would be great

thanks for any help.

Scott

[naughty]

The scale command has a "distance Only" flag, -dso, which scales multiple objects, but only their distance away from each other, not thier actual sizes... if you did something like:

scale -pivot 0 0 0 -r 1.1 1.1 1.1 -dso;

this would push the selected objects away from the specified pivot point..
(presuming the explosion point was at 0,0,0 - you could always insert your real explode point here)

is this any help at all.. it's a lot simpler than doing maths or expressions..!

:nathaN

[sheriffcicada]

Thanks naughty;

This is very close. I have tried it in a test scene, and I am getting some strange results. If I select only one object, it does nothing, select two objects, and the second object doesn't scale until the second iteration, and selected more than two, and the objects all move away from the specified point, even if one of the objects is sitting directly on top of that point. This looks like a good solution though, I will play with it later. I am also using the polysetVolume command to make smaller parts go farther, and larger parts less. Anyways, if I get it workin, I will post it here.

Thanks

Scott

[ewerybody]

Hey Scott!

At the end of our Genius 2 project I had a bad day and wrote a script to let buildings explode with dynamics. That was fun.. :]

I had to cut everything in pieces and then apply the script, it did the following: It attached everything to a gravity field and a radial force wich was animated to send out an impulse on the objects. The objects get an animation on the damping to make them move slower at the end.. Then I baked everything and it was ready for the game engine...

Maybe you want to take a look.:

explodeIt!.mel

Its not as "genius" as the game itself, but .. we had some fun