Aim instances along particle motion?

[matt estela]

Seemingly simple thing, but i'm ashamed to admit I can't get this to work. Random rotation fine, but not this.

Assume the standard flock of birds thing. I setup a simple nparticle system, and instance birds onto the particles. I can't make each birds aim in the direction of its parent particle.

Clearly maya is able to calculate this rotation internally, as its used for the streak tail direction, but none of the options appear to behave for instances. Little help?

I don't really have to do a particle expression for this do I? Ugh.

-matt

[Milos Vukotic]

If I understand you well, you want your birds to be pointing their beak to point at the path along which they currently flow?

If so, then I think that Effects > Curve Flow" (in a Dynamics sub menu) which gives you regular particles and not nparticles would work perfectly, cause then you just have to go Flow_particleShape > Instancer (Geometry Replacement) and set Aim Direction" to Velocity.

I assume the same should stand for nParticles, but from what I remember there was a bit more work regarding nParticles for some reason. But not a lot really, like just having to make a new custom Velocity per particle attribute or something like that.

Let me know if I understood you well.

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[matt estela]

Aha, not exactly what I was after, but gave me a clue to what I was doing wrong. In my setup I just had to set aim direction to velociy as you describe, then pre-rotate my instance mesh until it lined up. I would have assume it had to point down +z, but instead looks like its +x.

Thanks!

[Milos Vukotic]

You are welcome. I'm glad that I could help even if not directly.

I too usually have to prerotate stuff or rotate and freeze transform, cause I also assume that the Z is the default forward axis of the instancer and I fall for that same mistake every time :)