CompuServe Messages

MG, I've been using 3ds for almost 3 years now full-time, so I know it quite well – it's just other 3d program that I'm not familiar with <g>. However, I've just started using Softimage which is certainly an eye-opener and hopefully we'll see some of it's powerful features in 3ds in future versions. Now to answer some of your questions: >> and apparently caught Gary at a very bad time. << Gary's really busy developing more exciting IPAS routines for us, so the rest of us try to alleviate some of his ASOFT workload. I'm busy too developing games, but I just try to tackle a few selected questions when I can. >> COPIES (editor) or INSTANCES (k/f) << instances if the objects have identical materials. If you need seperate materials and types of objects you could make copies in the 3d editor and copy the tracks of the first object to the others (objects/tracks/copy position, rotation absolute). This would place them on the same path. Then you'd just slide their tracks in time individually. >> Do you manually "lay them out" along the path properly oriented ? << shouldn't be necessary since you're copying all the tracks absolutely from one to the others (either in the instancing operation or with tracks copy operation). >> Do you mean copies / instances when you say dummy objects or actually dummy objects ? << I just used dummies as examples. It could have been a box that I created in the 3d editor and then made instances of in the keyframer. The fact they are dummies is not important – it's the principal. >> If you mean that there are several copies of the spurt object plus the original, all sharing the same 3D space and traveling down the path in unison, only activated at appropriate times via the slide offset manipulation, then I tried this early on with these results: << Exactly. Just like a train's carriages follow the same path, only a little later in time from the one in front. If your results were inappropriate then I suspect the whole particle technique is probably not very good for your intended "gaseous" application. My other thought would be to use the animated texture/opacity maps technique. You'd apply the mapping co-ordinates during the lofting procedure so that your colour-cycling bit maps would follow the convoluted path of the tubes. Sounds like you were doing something like this in the end. >> If you're willing, I'm listening and looking foward to the next installment. Would it be too much trouble to ask you to u/l a .3ds file of the test you did which looked pretty good ? << It's easier to answer the questions. Besides my example .3ds file was absurdly simple and didn't show much of anything except objects following a path through a tube one after the other. Nothing more. To constrain the particles to the tube you would need to do the following trick: