Positioning objects or particles

[vtec]

Hi folks,

would there be a way to bulk organize a "swarm" of particles or objects? Let's say there's a bunch of little squares scattered across a scene in one frame, and during 20 frames I want them to be positioned in a shape of an arrow pointing upwards.



Would there be another way than manually rendering movement of each of the little squares in the Keyframer? Some advanced Particle Generator settings maybe, or some other magical workaround? I am on TVPaint 10 on Windows 10. Many thanks in advance!

[slowtiger]

No, there's no other way than doing it for each object separately.

Tip: Working backwards is much easier, arrange everything to the final shape first, then, with the keyframer, set random position. Reverse sequence after rendering and merging all layers.

[vtec]

Oh I see. Thank you Mr. Tiger!

[ematecki]

You can also reverse the *keys* before rendering.
In case you have other effects like motion blur, they will still be correct this way.

[slowtiger]

Reversing keys must be done layer by layer, reversing the final merged layer is much less steps.

[ematecki]

[Edited]
Sorry, you can't reverse keys on all Keyframers (or all FXs for that matter) at once...
Doing it one by one is time consuming, so unless you have to do it (because of, say, motion blur), slowtiger's method is faster.

[Peter Wassink]

you could consider doing it manually using the CTRL key
if you animate reversed so you start with the arrow.
create a number of layer of sufficient length
then move each blue square (as a custombrush) from its position in the arrow while holding CTRL key.
depending on the complexity it could be more work, but it does offer you a lot of control on the movement of the individual particles.

[slowtiger]

Oh yes, stamping stuff can be much faster than setting up FX for each layer. It also helps to have a layout layer with all movement paths and indicated positions underneath ... scene can be done in 15 min.