Cineversity

The problem is how to destroy a surge of advancing particle spheres. The animation shows a clock that starts releasing particle spheres at 5 o’clock, which grow and overwhelm the face until 10 o’clock, when the spheres disintegrate.

For this iteration I started with an icosahedron sphere and made it editable. Next steps:

Mesh/Commands/Disconnect function to separate the polygons
Add the pose morph tag to the sphere - points mode
As pose 2, used the Normal Scale and Normal Move tools to expand the sphere diameter while scaling the polygons to zero

It works pretty well. However I am sure Thinking Particles/Pfragment is a better way to go, as I expect it adds more options for dyanamics (i.e. colliding fragments) but on reviewing the tutorials available I was immediately lost in the weeds on the technical set up - the example (snowflakes on a windshield) was much more complex than my little problem, and I couldn’t figure out how to simplify it. Any suggestions would be most appreciated!

I would also like to have the disintegration occur in a wave from front to back, rather than all the spheres at the same instant - like how the plain effector controls animation in a cloner with dropoff. Can the plain effector work with Thinking Particles? 

And if I knew how, I would make it so the color transition occurs within the life of the individual sphere starting at birth, not to all the spheres at the same time. That way there’s a mixture of colors spanning yellow to red through the whole animation. Would multi-shader be the option of choice?

Project can be found here:

https://adobe.ly/2COZM92

I can’t get around a MIME error when I try to upload my project file through the website, and in this instance I can’t access DropBox or Amazon Drive. So Adobe Cloud will have to work for the moment.

Thank you!

Hi mford610,

Thanks for the file! Yes, Adobe Cloud will work for me as well. I have to add this to my suggestions (I do not click nor download from unknown source, but how would, right?). I wish I had an answer for the MIME stuff…

I really tried to get everything as simple as possible. I hope I found the smallest possible set up with all the features you asked for.

Here is an example:
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/arrCOrYAqT6xFpaZ0Ff0IwTk50LJ6dUr9UuezqBBtho

To get any age-based information, one needs to use anything but the standard Particles. I feed that Age/Life result into a range mapper and then into a MoGraph Weight Tag. It would be better with two, for color and for dissolve each time a single Weight. But simplicity was the target. Changing the dissolve time will require an adjustment in the Colorizer (Color Channel).

The dissolving time can be adjusted with the Range mapper Spline interface.
That will sound all cryptic, but follow the information flow, and it will make sense, at least Cinema 4D can make sense out of it.
The dissolve is based on two child objects, one intact and one dissolved, the Plain effector will change that based on the Modify Clone settings.
Two weight tags
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/obEzaMaJbJYqEt977A9AvRosQfoXhWOEtduIc5iEuLp

Please let me know if there is a question.

Cheers

Wow! Yes, I would say the setup is certainly “simple,” in the same way an integrated circuit is simple! I will have to spend some time studying this out - but my first impression is Cinema is truly magic. Thank you for taking me to school!

Thanks a lot for the excellent feedback, mford610, very kind of you.

I’m glad you will explore it, if there is a question, just ask. I will try to illustrate it. Since we are in a forum, I would like to address the IC example. I hope you don’t mind. (I learned that in one of the many schools that I have visited, and electronic was part of it.

Yes, good example the IC (integrated circuit). It looks pretty complicated, but the core technology is just sand, melted and imprinted with a lot of single transistors. Each transistor has a collector, a transmitter and a base. These three allow a current to flow through based on a typically smaller current. So, a series of nice valves. This is in a nutshell all.

Similar to that is XPresso, a series of nodes with input and output ports while something small inside happens. Each Node can be explored by itself. The whole collection of nodes doesn’t need to be understood to start using them.

In other words, the idea of an IC can overwhelm, but if you break it down in small parts, it loses its complexity. Can you see yourself setting up those things in a week, in a month or whatever time frame you like? If yes, then you will. Step by step, and yes it always feels like a mountain first, and all of a sudden you are on the tip of the mountain, step by step.

ENJOY