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Author Topic: Place one tree per poly, at the center?  (Read 3333 times)

simmsimaging

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Place one tree per poly, at the center?
« on: November 15, 2012, 02:40:14 AM »
Hey -
Just working on positioning a crowd of people aligned with a bunch of seats in a stadium. I have separated a single poly for each chair cushion and and merged those into a single object to use FPP to scatter the people.

I cannot seem to figure out how to get FPP to drop one object per poly with any kind of precision though, and I cannot figure out how to get the person centered in the chair (center of the polygon).

Is this possible with FPP or should I be looking at Particle Flow for this?

Thanks !
b

iToo

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Re: Place one tree per poly, at the center?
« Reply #1 on: November 15, 2012, 09:25:54 AM »

It is possible, using single faces (of an unique mesh), or individual reference objects. In the first case, the farthest vertex defines the orientation. For reference objects, it is used the pivot alignment.

The procedure is described in Tree Editor->Creation Tools->Reference Objects.



« Last Edit: November 15, 2012, 09:30:36 AM by iToo »
Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

simmsimaging

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Re: Place one tree per poly, at the center?
« Reply #2 on: November 15, 2012, 09:28:23 AM »
Awesome - thanks! FPP rocks!

.. and great support as always  :)

/b

simmsimaging

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Re: Place one tree per poly, at the center?
« Reply #3 on: November 15, 2012, 10:52:28 AM »
Having some problems getting this to work actually..... Here is the reference object - just a bunch of poly's collapsed together:





Here is what it looks like using the Tree Editor method. It is creating 20K objects, but there are only about 4.5K faces and they are wildly out of alignment in places. There does not seem to be any controls for it though. Something I am doing wrong again?


iToo

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Re: Place one tree per poly, at the center?
« Reply #4 on: November 15, 2012, 11:03:50 AM »

Please, send us the poly to check it here. In this case, it should create a pair of items by poly (one per triangle), as shown in the image.

Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

simmsimaging

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Re: Place one tree per poly, at the center?
« Reply #5 on: November 15, 2012, 11:07:07 AM »
that's what I'm after :)  File sent via email.

Thanks for looking into it - hopefully it's just user error again.

b

iToo

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Re: Place one tree per poly, at the center?
« Reply #6 on: November 15, 2012, 11:38:16 AM »

The transformation of the poly object was creating some problems (it has rotation and negative scale). Try applying a Utilities->Reset XForm to it, and recreate the Forest object. If necessary, apply a Normal->Flip Normals modifier to the poly as well.

As expected, Forest creates a pair of items by seat, because each rectangle has two triangles. You should replace the seats by oriented triangles, to get the correct result in this case.

Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

simmsimaging

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Re: Place one tree per poly, at the center?
« Reply #7 on: November 15, 2012, 11:40:06 AM »
Ah - thanks. I figured it was likely something on our end.  Much appreciated!

b