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Author Topic: Animating with face center distribution doesn't seem to be working for me  (Read 1153 times)

RG1597

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Hi,

I am using Forest Pack to distribute leaves on a tree where the leaves are placed on the end of the branches. I am using tree editor and selecting the ends of the branches as face centers to place my leaves. That is all working well. Looks great.

I am trying to animate the tree, but even when animation is set to follow geometry, the forest instances (leaves) are staying in the same place as when I created them. If I change frames and then recreate the face center distribution, then the instances snap into place, but I don't really want to do this for every frame of animation - should it be happening automatically?

I am using Forest Pro 5.0.5, Max 2013 and Corona if that information is relevant.

Any help would be appreciated (I've probably missed a checkbox somewhere).

Thanks,
Adam
« Last Edit: August 25, 2016, 01:29:03 PM by RG1597 »

Michal Karmazín

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Hi Adam,

First let me mention, that the Animation - Follow Geometry isn't meant for such purpose (the animation for all distributed items will be in sync with the animation of the source item geometry). Please feel free to check our "Animating in Forest Pack" tutorial for more handy animation info.
Quote
"... forest instances (leaves) are staying in the same place as when I created them ..."
Actually, there's no dynamic link with used Reference Objects under Tree Editor - Creation Tools (I can confirm, we have plans to work on Creation Tools and it's already in our wish-list). I would suggest you to use the Generate mode, having the Surface Area operating in the UV mode - this way Forest will automatically adapt transforms of all items on every frame.

Best regards,

RG1597

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Hi Michal,

Thanks for reply. I tried the UV mode and it sort of worked but the leaves don't seem to be in the exact place that they should be. Also the scene is not rendering - it is stuck parsing. From the Corona forum, this may be something to do with collision detection?

It will be great if you can get face center distribution dynamically linked because until I tried to animate the tree, this was working perfectly - quick to set up (whereas the UV method took a long time to even display the leaves) and the leaves were definitely in the right place and on the end of the branches where they should have been :)

I'll keep trying the UV generation method, but I get the feeling it might be easier to animate a tree with the leaves already attached to model as geometry.

Thanks,
Adam