I'll have it up at the beginning of next week for you to have a play with mirek
Its got a simple option to switch between flocking and swarming now.

Si

---

Examples of bTraffic - a traffic animation tool for Maya
bFlocking - a tool for Maya 8.5+ to generate flocking and swarming behaviours
Jan/Feb Challenge 2007 Entry and W.I.P
May/Jun Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Mar/Apr Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Jan/Feb Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Nov/Dec Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Sep/Oct Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Jul/Aug Challenge 2005 Entry
www.flash-fx.net

now thats dam good advice from steve and a great offer from Tick.., doesn't get better than that.

be looking forward to it Tick and steve.., i will just jog on over to mike's site, haven't been there for a while. I probably have the tut already actually.., i think enzeflep sent it to me.., where ever or whoever he is now.

cheers
M

---

take it easy and life will be easy

Here you go mirek03 (and anyone else that is interested)
I've added the time range option today so that bit might be a bit buggy.
It's nowhere near a perfect tool but it does need people playing with it so that I can get feedback and improve it.
The next major thing is keyframing the resultant animation so that it and the objects can be exported as an animation file or similar.

bFlocking version 0.1 (maya 8.5+)

Si

---

Examples of bTraffic - a traffic animation tool for Maya
bFlocking - a tool for Maya 8.5+ to generate flocking and swarming behaviours
Jan/Feb Challenge 2007 Entry and W.I.P
May/Jun Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Mar/Apr Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Jan/Feb Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Nov/Dec Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Sep/Oct Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Jul/Aug Challenge 2005 Entry
www.flash-fx.net

very cool Tick, i have 20 min to get to the PO and pay some bills so I'll be quick. The movie is not locked off so i have time to experiment with your script. the movie is locked in 7-9 days. editor went down with a bad leg today.

i tried the flock at high end but cant even get it to work at all, maybe maya version is too high??

better run.., any tip greatly appreciated, looking forward to checking it out.

greatly appreciated,

M

---

take it easy and life will be easy

wow, just downloaded it, quite a page you have there.., i gotta get one myself.., makes a big differance at times like these.

---

take it easy and life will be easy

Generate a new simulation and then do a playblast to see what it will look like. At present it can be very system intensive if you have lots of boids flying around - thats why I'm looking at running it and generating a keyframe or motionpath style caching version which runs once and then discards the calculations and runs fine in realtime playback

Si

---

Examples of bTraffic - a traffic animation tool for Maya
bFlocking - a tool for Maya 8.5+ to generate flocking and swarming behaviours
Jan/Feb Challenge 2007 Entry and W.I.P
May/Jun Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Mar/Apr Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Jan/Feb Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Nov/Dec Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Sep/Oct Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Jul/Aug Challenge 2005 Entry
www.flash-fx.net

man you must have some programming technique under your belt.., how many hours did this project take from you (or give, whatever )

still trying to work it out, never used python.., barely used MEL.., sorry!

---

take it easy and life will be easy

other than creating the userSetup.py file (just a text file with one line of Python) you wont need to touch any Mel or Python. You can just use the window it generates to alter values etc..
I dont keep track of hours on programming - it harks back to the days when supposed project managers constantly hassled you about how long it would take to write something - the good old 'how long is a piece of string' scenario ...

Si

---

Examples of bTraffic - a traffic animation tool for Maya
bFlocking - a tool for Maya 8.5+ to generate flocking and swarming behaviours
Jan/Feb Challenge 2007 Entry and W.I.P
May/Jun Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Mar/Apr Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Jan/Feb Challenge 2006 Entry and W.I.P
Nov/Dec Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Sep/Oct Challenge 2005 Entry and W.I.P
Jul/Aug Challenge 2005 Entry
www.flash-fx.net

aye aye captian.., sounds cool. hopefully a bunch of the crew here will give it a goo too and give you feed back.

a piece of string..?? how high is high and how low is low?? good question !

---

take it easy and life will be easy

i just rendered out 500 frames of a single frame?? I didnt set any keys at all, I assumed what was happening on screen would render as such. The objects were in frame but it was all the same frame (I wondered why it did 500 frames in 10 minutes??)

---

take it easy and life will be easy

theres enough hits on this to warrant an answer.

the fix was

create.. 'emmitt from an object' for 30 frames at a very low speed, so that only two particles are released.

instance the two particles as nurbs sheres.

create two objects and use then as goals.

add turbulence to the particles.

key frame different weights on the goal objects so the 'flies' fly wildly about the place for 300 frames or whatever

it works very well when graded into the movie.

---

take it easy and life will be easy