Hi Dave,
The idea of the black-hole was pretty much based on some deformers. Setting the points of a grid a little bit different in z towards the middle would allow me to change the position more heavily with a Bulge deformer. If you need more on that—let me know.
However, the problem that I saw with the Target Effector, that it rotated all the clones to a certain degree, and Pitch>Off wasn’t helping with R.H rotation though.
So, I applied the Repel effect first to a Matrix Object. There the little placeholders (the gray cubes) rotate, but with the Inheritance Effector “you” can filter this out, just uncheck the rotation checkbox.
I set the Cloner Object to 169 clones (linear) so the Matrix via Inheritance can create your initial set up. Now the Repel effect can work with only position changes.
You need to find a balance between the Falloff settings (size /spline interface set up) AND the distance setting in the Target Effector. So the intersection of the objects is minimized.
All the best
Sassi
P.S. if you see the red cube isn’t moving at all, move the Taget Effector just a tiny little bit, so the drag origin and the object are not on the same position, and with the same position no idea where to go. ;o)