Cineversity

I need to build a wall out of a huge amount of words. It’s easy enough to build manually but not very efficient. So I turned to a Mograph Grid Object. The issue I can’t figure out is how to tighten up the wall so that there’s no space (or overlap) between the word clones. I feel like this should be a pretty easy thing to do but I can’t figure out how. I’m using Motext as the objects inside the Grid Cloner. I’ve attached what I have so far (obviously just a simple setup) and then the result I want to get to (which I had previously by just manually moving objects around.)

Hi Sean_Cusson,

I have no simple solution for it. Even the Push Apart Effector fails here.
This sounds more like a Python scripting case.

Anyway, please find below a little idea how to create a long random “String” for a MoText object. Press play (while the XPresso Tag is enabled) and when the wanted length is reached, disable the Xpresso, create a copy of the MoText and delete the Xpresso tag on it.
Scene File:
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/xFjrpz14gZUliIKu8jLWnhKoM3HNhMGHD114NxQMUWa?ref_=cd_ph_share_link_copy

Double click on the “Result” line (in the original/Random) Xpresso Tag and delete the entry, start over by enabling the Xpresso Tag. (In the file it is off when you open the file, enable it and press play. Clicking somewhere for a new entry or pressing the a key will not progress the random part and the entry will be repeated. Start with the play head from different frames, as the random value is connected to the frame, or set the Random node from Time to Free.

After a while you might have enough MoText objects to clone the walls.

Alternative, you can create an very long String with this method and use the String Nodes to take only a certain part our of it. The downside would be that the start and endings of the wall has partial words.

I hope that this gives at least some new ideas. BTW, the String Nodes are in the XPresso Editor> XPool> System Presets>Strings. Relatively straight forward, but explore them to gain more ideas.

All the best

Follow up.

Here is a file that use the “string results” of the random generator.

https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/umIqYavylc7aAwVJGmXwywtOsfdSlsoi7Wk0rsl7EBS?ref_=cd_ph_share_link_copy

The idea is, to have a very long string, and then take only a part out of it with a different starting point.

While selecting all the MoText Objects, go to Attribute Manager and type in the Start: num*value, whereby the value is the shift from one to the next
The Count is the length.

All the best

Thanks Dr. Sassi. Those are good workarounds but, unfortunately, they don;t get me quite where I was hoping to go. The reason I thought about using a Mograph cloner and motext was so that I could change words on the fly (if the client wants changes. The walls might already be built by that point so I just need to go in and swap out (or add) a new word. I’m thinking that the manual method is the only real way to go.

Thanks for the feedback, Sean_Cusson.

Yes, manual has the advantage of being closely art-directed, but clients have to wait.

I have pushed it a little bit further, and to showcase how fast a new word is integrated I made this video. Select all XPresso tags and enable, set the words you need and let it run from the start. When done disable all XPresso tags.
I avoid here an Iteration Node, but would perhaps speed up things a little.

Here is an one minute screen capture:
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/1eWg4Tx4BfJYeTRvRL7mLRVtcm5pGFdaXfeSaFedjok?ref_=cd_ph_share_link_copy

Scene file as used in the clip above
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/kRxzFK27EQ2Jm8lCJ5ADtosZ5gNX7VzhfEukNvv4XNz?ref_=cd_ph_share_link_copy

In each of the five fields, the entries are not limited to one or two words only, in this way repetition and “block” size could be more controlled. Five fields are not the max number either.

But yes, all of this wrapped in a nice Python script, with the words needed written randomly into a list, but that is not my part here, that is the Plug In Café area of work.
Perhaps just a Python script that can read a text file. So one can type in the stuff into a document and keep previous documents to switch.

Some fonts allow for even spacing, which creates a clean cut on both sides, but I might look more boring of course.

My best wishes for your project.

That’s very cool! I’ll have to start playing with this. Thanks again Dr. Sassi!

You’re very welcome, Sean_Cusson.

ENJOY