Simple Keyframing Of Particle Position?

[ceileachair]

Hi All,

This is my first post, and although I did look through the forums, I couldn't find a direct answer to my question.

I'm just getting started in maya particles, and was disappointed to find out that the instancer doesn't allow you to instance lights. So I thought I would try and find a script that would back out the position of some of my particles (perhaps with locators in the same position or something), but I haven't been able to locate anything.

Can anyone help me? I have some ideas on how to do it (create a locator with with the particle ID in the name, and move it to the position of the particle each frame and key it), but I'm not very fluent with mel yet.

Is there already a tool that would let me do this, and I've just missed it?

Thank you!

[joojaa]

QUOTE(ceileachair @ 06/02/08, 07:31 AM) [snapback]286555[/snapback]
I'm just getting started in maya particles, and was disappointed to find out that the instancer doesn't allow you to instance lights.

Yes that would defeat the point of calling it a instance, instance reefers to sharing the pointdata, since a light has no point data and in no way lessens the computational cost it would be stupid to kket you do it. Asit is as heavy as having x nonistanced lights.

You can still use particles to drive transforms if you wish what you do use a softbody to connect the data. Thst the optimal way you can offcourse use expression to create them on the fly but i suggest you avoid that and do it only at rendertime (your viewport wont show the lights anyway).

And yes someone had a script for ithis on their homepage, cant remember where tough.

It is however lighter to use final gathering instead.

[ceileachair]

Hi Joojaa,

Thanks for the quick reply. If anyone comes across the script, please let me know. I'm going to work on my own version.
As for the softbody trick - thanks I'll look into that.

Instancing lights would still be helpful. Both Max and Houdini can do this. Final gathering won't deliver the effect here, as I'm looking for localization of the light to follow a given particle pass. As for the heaviness of the lights, that depends on if you're using shadows, mostly. In this case I wouldn't be, its just for illumination.

[joojaa]

http://www.highend3d.com/maya/downloads/me...ights-3272.html

QUOTE
Instancing lights would still be helpful

Dont know about max its just a responsibility of terminology, houdini works differently. If its going to be called a instancer then no it should not be able to do this. The namae implies a sort of memory saving trick. Now because if something is called something ist should also represent that something. Its not good habit to call a node that does copying a instancer now is it because thet would be misleading.

However making a copier node isn't that hard, its been reasoned tough that people who understand and need the difference are smart enough to make thir own nodes and understand the implications. (this is general programming thing, that furstrates me often. So instead of doing the best job possible you do the worst job possible because otherwise youd be blamed for doing the best job because users don't care. If its problems for them they think it was your fault. By leaving it out you are now painfully aware why its so slow as it is. So what you edn up si doing problem elimination at cost of the smartest users)

And no maya actually allows you to instance the lights with isntancer they just don't do anything because a instance of light produces nothing in maya graphs inside the renderers. You could teach maya to mr this tough.