Cineversity

Hi, I’m looking for away to get an animation to work smoother. Basically a stream of frames or planes, or what will become still photos that stream in a create a video wall. It is getting close, but am having trouble getting the planes to land on the wall in a more random and smoother feel.  It uses the inheritance effector to transition from a spline effector to a matrix clone with an object that creates the wall. There is also a bend deformer to bend the video wall, and because of that there is a mograph cache tag in it. Been trying to add a random effector to change the weight of the matrix points, thus giving the frames some randomness as they assemble on the wall, as they all now move from left to right. Any idea on what I’m missing and how to set up better.

Thanks much

Jon Lewis

Hi Jon Lewis,

The way it is set up right now, the Bend Deformer works several times—I guess you like to have this cascading effect, but it creates a scene set up that is a little bit more difficult to control. I wouldn’t do it that way, but perhaps I miss something of your ideas.

Smooth is a term that many people might define differently. I had people tell me that, only that it came out later as pacing and dynamic. If I guess here, is it that they should come in but land smoothly.

However, one idea would be to use a Delay Effector set to Blend. I did this for a test, with a Cylindrically Falloff. Which means the target bended wall would be inside of that Falloff. I noticed that after all is done, some clones start to dance all of the sudden, and it needs then to have the Delay shut off. Note that any object that has “points” can be used as a Falloff source, so the bended Plane (Current State to Object) could be used with a little distance for the Delay-Blend effect. I suggest this here more or less to share an alternative. It feels not super stable. So next one:

The main suggestion, and I have attached a lighter version for this, is to use the Inheritance Falloff and here the Spline GUI, See image), to dynamically set up the transition speed from the starting position to the final position. Note that in this example the Falloff is set up kind of “inverse” depends on what Inheritance effector takes the lead. I have overdone it here a little bit, to make a point.

To have three Planes in the scene would be possible, but a little bit more difficult to set up. The middle plane would get as well a bend Deformer, but also a Displacer Deformer, to introduce some randomness, which can be adjusted as well via Falloff. I like to have any step clear separated to keep an easy and clear control about each, but that leads sometimes to more stress to combine all them, it is a balance act for sure.

I hope the little scene gives you some further ideas.

One more—as you use planes, you could also use the PolyFX to scruff-up the target plane. Which allows for a lot of more options.

All the best

Sassi

Hop you have been well, thanks so much for your ideas and time. You always come up with amazing solutions! I will take a look at it tonight and am back on the project tomorrow, so this really helps.
Thanks,

Jon Lewis

Hi Jon Lewis,

Thank you very much for your nice feedback. I hope it will work for your set up.

The spline adjustment, if done on the major “movement” effector, will certainly enable a dynamically flight, starting strong, then nearly stopped as in a friction field, and then smoothly landed. Perhaps start exploring it with a simplified set up, so further explorations are much more fun.

My best wished

Sassi