My challenges with understanding dynamics continue. I’m in the process of trying to fill a glass sphere with hundreds (maybe thousands) of gumball spheres. Ultimately, this scene will be used only as a static image with no animation. I would like to fill the sphere to 3 different levels for 3 different still pictures.
I was successful in doing so with a scene that has 6.5 cm gumballs, but when I sized the gumballs down to 2 cms each, the dynamics no longer trigger. Therefore, I tried doing it with an emitter instead, but now the 2 cm gumballs are falling through the larger glass sphere.
I’m wondering if you’d be willing to help me figure out the best way to do this with the smaller gumballs?
I’ve uploaded a picture of the scene with the bigger gumballs to show you the look I’m after when the glass sphere is nearly full.
With your permission, I’d like to upload my scene file for you to explore.
If you go to the Attribute Manager> Mode> Project> Dynamics: Steps per Frame 10
That should work fine. Even eight steps might work, but I wouldn’t be frugal here.
I would have a volume placed in the middle, as mentioned above, perhaps with a gum-ball-texture.
If you like, perhaps use the Particle Emitter as Object in a Cloner Object. Place the Gum-Balls under the Cloner. Cache the dynamics preferable with an MG-Cache. If this is done, the Multi-Instance work. (No idea about Redshift and this. There are other ways to store the three states for rendering. If you have an interest in it, let me know, but I have no license of Redshift.
Thanks for your guidance, Doc. 10 Steps per Frame is getting the job done.
I’m not entirely sure that I understand the idea of using the Particle Emitter as an Object in a Cloner. I’ll give it a try to see if I can make this work.
What does it mean to cache the dynamics with an “MG-Cache?” I don’t know what an MG-Cache is.
The file “…_01.c4d” shows how to use the Emitter as Source for the Cloner. The Cloner has a MoGraph Cache Tag applied. This Tag is available in the Object Manager>Tags> MoGraph> MoGraph Cache. (MG Cache)
This Cache Tag can hold more information than the Dynamics, including the colors that it might receive from a Random Effector. At the moment it is cached, the Multi Instances can work (they are not useable for dynamics, but if cached, it works quite well.) The Cache will be huge, hence why I haven’t shared it, you need to click on the tag and calculate it newly. I also have a “filler-volume” integrated.
I used then a Tracer, set to Connect Objects, while it uses the Cloner Object as a source. While that was set up, I pressed the C key to get a spline. This lead to file “…11.c4d”.
In the file “…_11.c4d” I have used just the Spline and placed spheres on its vertices. Since it was based on a Sphere, I used a copy of it to scale it down a little bit. That created another layer of Gum-Balls. Perhaps a third layer would work nicely, but a sphere with a Gum-Ball texture should be sufficient already. Each spline will represent 5,000 spheres already!
Please let me know if there is any other question.
Doc, thanks for all the effort you put into this (and every question that I ask)! I will definitely check out the scenes you sent. This said, I’ve been busy putting your previous advice to use and I think I may actually have succeeded in making everything work…with the exception of the multi-instance, which did not work on my first try. I’ll examine your scenes and keep going until I’m completely satisfied.
I look forward to checking it out, Doc! The good news is that even without Multi-Instances, I was able to pull a beautiful render from the gumball machine full of gumballs in only 8 minutes using Redshift on a PC with 4 fast GPUs. I love this age of GPU rendering!
Doc, I have another question. If I want to run a second dynamics simulation in the same scene, is there a way to lock in the dynamics from the first dynamic simulation so it never has to run again? In other words, I want to turn a single frame from the initial simulation into a permanent state for that simulation. Put another way, I want the gumballs to fill the machine only once, then stay that way forever while I run a second simulation where I have gumballs flying out of the front of the machine. Hope this makes sense.
There is always the option to use the MoGraph cache and save it as a file.
Since these are all spheres, I prefer to create a spline out of all sphere positions (Tracer) and use this. The spline (Tracer> C-key) allows me then to even move a single Clone, or a many, to art direct the results.
Yes, you could use both methods and be comfortably safe. I used the spline option above, if you need a workflow for this, please let me know. I’m happy to provide all the steps required in a screen capture.
Thanks, Doc! If it’s not too much trouble, I’d love to see your workflow for this. I don’t have any experience with creating splines out of object positions/tracers.
So they need some directions (Cache).