Random organic movment in Pflow

[ndrzeja]

Hi there,

I'm rarely using Pflow, so this might turn out to be quite an easy thing, but I'm trying to make a swarm of flying objects with pflow and I'm a bit stuck. I need a random movement, but without a sudden change of directions (more like a butterfly than a zigzagging fly) and with a more or less constant speed. I tried using different sets of age, speed test or wind turbulence, but I wasn't able to get it right.
wind turbulence - speed is not constant
age test + random speed direction - sudden change of directions

The only workaround solution I came up with so far is to animate one insect along a spline and then just use it as shape instance, but that would mean I can't add spawn trails for example, so would prefer to get this motion with pflow functionality.

[krueger_1]

I modified an old sample scene I had which uses age tests to loop through two events. I think the key that you were missing was a lower divergence of the particle speed. Too high a value and they might jerk into a perpendicular direction.

pflow_random_motion_b__max_2009.zip

[ndrzeja]

Thanks a lot. That's a nice set-up, although I still think there's a particular look I'm missing here.
I found this video that shows more or less what I'm looking for.
http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-video-9646593-magic-scenes-fantasy-series-enchanted-butterflies-fly...
So the set-up with age test/speed divergence doesn't work well with those random changes of direction. In that video I posted they aren't sharp and the particle trajectory is curved, but still those butterflies do make once in a while a rapid change of direction. With age test/speed divergence you either have small variation and somewhat smooth trajectory, or a jerky one.

[krueger_1]

In that video, it looks like they gave one (or a few) butterfly a path constraint and then duplicated it a bunch of times, which is an option for you. You could birth particles off the object on the path. Or you could point cache the object on the path constraint, change the position controller back to Position XYZ (to get rid of the path constraint), and use that as an animated shape instance in pflow.

I worked on the previous file a litte and I think the particles have a smoother motion, but they don't have that round arc I think you're looking for. I added noise and waveform controllers to the divergence in the speed ops to give them some random divergence. But if you need that round arc, I'd go with the path constraint.

pflow_random_motion_b__max_2009_1.zip