By Kim Petersen (Kim_Beta) (217.208.119.27) on Thursday, January 09, 2003 - 07:25 am:

Hello all,

I want to animate cells moving around, it should have the feel as if you were looking thru a microscope. Is there anyway to animate the cells so that they interact with each other? Best would be if they would merge, forming a new cell.

Question 2: Is there a way to generate a random motion for these cells? Or do I have to keyframe them all? (hope not..)


All answers are appreciated.

/Kim

By Michael Green (Dodgy) (217.207.247.34) on Thursday, January 09, 2003 - 08:14 am:

You can use particles, and replace them with objects, or just use hypervoxels...

By Kim Petersen (Kim_Beta) (217.208.119.27) on Thursday, January 09, 2003 - 08:34 am:

Michael,

thanks for the tip. If I use HV can I control the cells to lie "flat"? I don't want the cells to rotate, they should just "swim" around...

By Michael Linde (Mlinde) (4.64.198.127) on Friday, January 10, 2003 - 10:28 am:

5{.

However, the "merge, forming a new cell" is something you will have to develop yourself, likely using morph targets.

As will all great applications, there is no "make this function" button although I'm sure you client believes there is.

By kenneth woodruff (Kenneth) (12.236.254.153) on Tuesday, January 21, 2003 - 07:27 pm:

Kim, I'd use ParticleFX to generate the motion, including avoidance if you'd like. Voxels can be set to squash and stretch. If you use surface-type voxels, they'll mix together when the touch.

By kenneth woodruff (Kenneth) (12.236.254.153) on Tuesday, January 21, 2003 - 08:31 pm:

Kim, I'd use ParticleFX to generate the motion, including avoidance if you'd like. Voxels can be set to squash and stretch. If you use surface-type voxels, they'll mix together when they touch.

By kenneth woodruff (Kenneth) (12.236.254.153) on Tuesday, January 21, 2003 - 08:32 pm:

D@mn this forum system.

By Kim Petersen (Kim_Beta) (217.208.119.175) on Tuesday, January 21, 2003 - 08:39 pm:

Kenneth,

thanks for the tip. You don't happen to know a good tutorial on this subject do you... ?

Thanks again Kenneth! (For the double post)

By Hervé Steff (Hervé) (212.76.255.89) on Wednesday, January 22, 2003 - 12:23 am:

I rememnber using small displacemen map on particles, then go for HV....

By kenneth woodruff (Kenneth) (12.236.254.153) on Thursday, January 23, 2003 - 02:42 pm:

Kim, sorry I don't know where there might be a tutorial.

One thing that might help is a scene that shipped with 7.5 that shows particle crowding/avoidance in a totally different form. I don't remember the name of it, but it has "DRONE" in the scene file some place. Probably in a "MENITHINGS" directory, since it used his drone character. The animation shows a drone following a particle flow that rolls over some little hills. The particle setup is the part you'll want to check out. Particle interaction is used to keep the copies of the drone from hitting each other.

By Kim Petersen (Kim_Beta) (217.208.119.175) on Thursday, January 23, 2003 - 08:14 pm:

Kenneth,

i'll check that out. The motion with particle_FX is out of the way (though I need to tweak it to get a more fluidly motion).
And now to make the cells "mix"...

'til later

/Kim