retiming particle animation based on proximity

[super gnu]

hi. i have a project where i need to break an object into elements, animate those spinning and scaling as an object passes close. 

i imagine this is something i could do in tyflow, but i cant figure it out.  

 i thought of using "birth objects" but that only respects object transform animation ( that may be enough, but vertex animation might be necessary)

also there seem to be no controls to offset /control the animation. 

i thought of the "shape" operator,  this supports offsetting the animation by event age.. driven by a collision operator this works partially..  however, 

a) you cannot mass-edit the objects in the shape operator, and setting the properties one by one is gonna be really painful with hundreds of objects.. 

and b) you can only offset the start frame.. 


 i would ideally like an adjustable  "falloff" around the collision object, where close particles would advance their animation more than far ones. 

does that make sense?  that way as the collider passes, the particles would animate, arriving at their end frame as they impact collider.  then as the collider movesd away they would cycle back through animation to frame 0 again. 


it would be cool if i didnt even have to use particles for this..   some way to use tyselect to drive keyframed animation... i know i can drive the morpher like this, but morphing between 2 shapes doesnt give me enough control. 

any suggestions most appreciated

[tyFlow]

I don't really get what you're trying to do. Why not "animate" the particles using normal tyFlow properties (rotation, speed, etc)? Why try to import animation on hundreds of individual objects?

[super gnu]

hi, thanks for the reply. its because the individual objects probably wont have simple PRS animation.. some will, some will curl up like carpet rolls, some will fold up... some will have a cloth like behaviour..

it might not end up being hundreds of objects, but i need to keep this flexible.

i just need a powerful way to control this animation en-masse. ideally offsetting the start point/speed of the animated objects by distance to a collision object, or some other driver i didnt consider yet.. (its a project pitch, im trying to get the most flexible approaches i can find.. so im ready for anything. tyflow is, if nothing else, very flexible. )

i can get a basic version of this effect by animating all objects, adding pointcache on the top of each, and then using exposeTM helper to control pointcache frame offset by distance to a dummy.. but its very manual to set up, and to then control the "falloff" of the effect etc, it gets very manual, using expressions, and im not that techy.

if i could use tyflow to do this i could then do other nice stuff like add secondary dynamics to the objects etc..