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+--- Thread: "Swarming Ant Effect" - How? (/thread-4053.html)
"Swarming Ant Effect" - How? - Domokun - 01-25-2024
Greetings Ty-Friends
! I am new to TYFlow. How would I go about recreating this or a similar effect? I know I'd need to spawn the particles and have them follow some sort of path. I am wondering about the back and forth movement and almost like a seek, collide/acknowledge behaviour and the "ant" spawning in different places.
Video example link - https://www.dropbox.com/t/MKUfMpklCef8Otg5
Thank you for your help!
RE: "Swarming Ant Effect" - How? - d4rk3lf - 01-26-2024
(01-25-2024, 08:46 PM)Domokun Wrote: How would I go about recreating this or a similar effect? I know I'd need to spawn the particles and have them follow some sort of path. I am wondering about the back and forth movement and almost like a seek, collide/acknowledge behaviour and the "ant" spawning in different places.
What I usually do in similar scenarios, is creating inversed spherical wind, so it attracts particles, and then I animate wind movement.
Other then that you will probably need object bind operator (so ants are stuck to the ground), shape operator with animation on (so ants are animated), rotation operator so they are rotating in the direction of travel, particle physics operator, so they collide with each other, and finally some turbulence applied in the force operator, so they go more random (creating swirling patterns).
RE: "Swarming Ant Effect" - How? - Domokun - 01-27-2024
(01-26-2024, 09:48 AM)d4rk3lf Wrote:(01-25-2024, 08:46 PM)Domokun Wrote: How would I go about recreating this or a similar effect? I know I'd need to spawn the particles and have them follow some sort of path. I am wondering about the back and forth movement and almost like a seek, collide/acknowledge behaviour and the "ant" spawning in different places.
What I usually do in similar scenarios, is creating inversed spherical wind, so it attracts particles, and then I animate wind movement.
Other then that you will probably need object bind operator (so ants are stuck to the ground), shape operator with animation on (so ants are animated), rotation operator so they are rotating in the direction of travel, particle physics operator, so they collide with each other, and finally some turbulence applied in the force operator, so they go more random (creating swirling patterns).
Thank you so much for your help/suggestion. I am attaching a video of what I have so far. I am unfamiliar with the inversed spherical wind. Is this the standard Max wind with - values or a Tyflow operator?
Right now my particles get spawned in one area of the object (seen at beginning of video) I'd love for them to be more spread out initially. I have tried to use FACE or VERTEX in the object bind to no avail. Finally are there any nodes I'm using here that are redundant ?
Thank you again for your help.
RE: "Swarming Ant Effect" - How? - d4rk3lf - 01-27-2024
Hey...
I see a lot's of nodes, a lot's of strange stuff in your flow, but honestly, I like how it look so far... for the first test
That's great start bro, keep it up!
Quote:Finally are there any nodes I'm using here that are redundant ?Yup.
PhysX Collision operators in both events are totally unnecessary, because you are not using any PhysX simulation here (which you would trigger with PhysX Shape operator), and they achieve nothing. You can delete them, and (for the time being) forget about all the PhysX stuff for now (all operators that starts with PhysX)), you don't need them here.
Quote: I am unfamiliar with the inversed spherical wind. Is this the standard Max wind with - values or a Tyflow operator?
Not operator, but similar as Max wind... you see... Tyflow has it's own wind... own wind icon... Tywind
Just create it somewhere in the scene, make it spherical, make it-s strength inversed (something like -0.1), add force operator in TyFlow, add that TyWind to it.. and that's it... they will be attracted to it.
(one note, thought... wind (or any force effects, tends to get faster and stronger over the time, so it's often wise to place slow operator in the same event (just by default worked nice for me in 90% cases).
Quote:Finally are there any nodes I'm using here that are redundant ?
I will quote this again, but not because you have redundant operators, but because you have them all messed around in placement.
You see.. in your screen video, I see that position object is waaaay bellow everything, and it should be right bellow birth operator.
Why is that?
Because, in this case it might not cause trouble for you, but in other cases, it will.
Operators (from Tyflow engine ) are read from top to down.
I always somehow try to maintain them in this position:
- Birth
- Position
- Shape
(then later I do, whatever I need to do).
Hope this helps bro.
Keep up the great work...
Let's make those ants run!