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