I’ve got this girl with nice hair… now she throws her head backwards, and… her hair stays in position 1… is there a way to animate those static particles? This could also be used for wind that blows through a field of grass.
I thought i once saw a tut about it.
Herm…
if they are static they are static… isn’t it 
?
Sorry. You can’t animate static particles. But, on the other hand, hair made via static particles are fairly bad. There is an excellent script (Fiber) by RipSting hanging around (search)
That script creates hair/fur/grass as a mesh. and meshes are animatable.
Stefano
P.S. Beware, I’m not saying that it will be EASY to animate
:< :< :< :< :< :<
I’ve made this wonderful sheep with nice wol (?) but cant stick the fibers to the deforming mesh… think I’m gonna curl up in fetus position and cry 
Anyone suggestions?
Well 
show up a still…
cheer up
Stefano
whew after a night of good rest, 
here are my stills. The body http://www24.brinkster.com/asbest/help/bodyselect.htm moves (i’ve got only the frontlegs animated) and a piece of wol http://www24.brinkster.com/asbest/help/furselect.htm now i only need to attach them so that the fur (is a mesh) moves along with the body … but how?
Well…
if the body moves, the body is a mesh too… you have parented it to the armature and defined vertex groups right?
You cannot do the same with particles.
Particles both static AND dinamic (sadly) are precalculated. THis means that particles are computed BEFORE the computation of armatures, hence particles stands still
You really have to use something else than particles…
Stefano
Stefano thanks for your fast replies! I really appreciate it. Here is my preview render http://www24.brinkster.com/asbest/help/avi.htm right click and save as (had to rename it).
I have made fur as a mesh. Do you think I have to animate that fur piece by piece?
Isn’t there a python coder out there who could make a recalculation of particles p/f? He would be the bomb.
Greet,
Luc
Mmm…
herm nice bull herm
a bit massive for sheep ?
You have some glitch in the animated mesh… and some funny dark points… meybe you have to remove doubles?
For the fur, you can make ALL the fur a single mesh… like I assume the sheep is a single mesh. So you can animate it exactly the same way (beware 64kvertices limit!!!)
Stefano
Sheep or actually a ram. It has to have power that’s why he’s soooo big. I’ve done a s-mesh and the dark funny points are gone. And the glitch is caused by to much deformation.
I’ll try it out and let you know if the result is there.
PS8
Ok heres the deal. S68 is definately on the right track…particles are out of the question. Its about as far from efficient as you could ever imagine. I think that Blue Sky Studios is on the right track (or ALias Wavefront is because Blue Sky uses Maya…but thats not important… we can reproduce this in Blender with little to no problem). I was going to try this method in a similar style in Blender if I had some time and then ofcourse export it to Yafray. Anyways they use a card system…similar to a script I saw in Blender that generated leaves for trees or something. Anyways, basically what you could do is select some edges or vertices of the mesh you want to add fur, hair, or even feathers to. Then extrude these edges or vertices…in Blender I would select the edges as I said before…extrude…hit enter. Then with the newly extruded edges still selected by default scale them all out from the mesh…this should create a sense of a bunch of cards or plates sticking out from the model.
NOTE:For the prupose of this post I extruded them one by one so I am not sure if the “all at one time” method would work as planned…the more I think about ti probably not…I will update the post. My method gave me more control (which you should want when modeling your creature, character,…you want that fur to turn out just right) Assign each of these “cards” with a texture similar to the one shown below:
Thats right you guessed it…this map works with an alpha setting in the material buttons so that the whites of the image are transparent. Blue Skies actually use a few different variations based off of the same idea as the one I just posted to give it more of a random look rather than just using the same texture for every single card…my guess is that you could probably get away with three different variations.
Then when your done with the texturing, reselct only some of the newly extruded edges. Then on a sheet of paper or in your mind, divide the overall coat of fur or head of hair into different sections. Then parent the cards of each section to its very own empty. This gives you control over the behavior due to wind, gravity, etc. This method would not be very resource expensive…atleast not as bad as the methods used in the past and it works for the bigscreen so it obviously yields believable results. I am going out of town for a couple of weeks so I will have something on this for all of you when I get back. Hopefully I will have some ideas for someone who knows python so we can make this method less tedious…even without this script I am confident it will work.
Cheers,
Landis
to be more specific, actually alpha channels need Black areas to do them transparent areas, just so it is straighten out, but I guess Landis already knew this I am just more picky about it
ztonzy,
Yes I am familiar with this but Blender supports the mask to be either way(you can invert the prperties of the alpha mask) which is nice because I prefer to work with it in the manner mentioned above;) . Thanks for keeping on me though buddy …keep it up!! .
Cheers,
Landis
This method actually works but can you explain how to assign textures to the different plates? and I’m also interrested in how to control the empties.
Anyway thanks for your help
ps8,
I am sorry that I didnt see your question sooner…I will reply with an answer as soon as I get home from work tommorow. Hang tight.
Cheers,
Landis
I thought I heard somewhere that static particles could be animated with a lattice. is this a myth?
Also, though I can’t remember who came up w it, but, transparent planes shaped into long strands make pretty good hair.
I am not sure about this but it sounds promising I think 
. I would have to do some research. Most of the stuff that I know I have learned because I needed to in order to fullfill a certain look I was striving to achieve. This sounds like it may have some potential, that is, if I understand it correctly. Explain more, perhaps with some images as well if you can.
Yes, I have came across quite a bit on this technique…seems to work out just great (depending on the look you are going for).
ps8,
I am not sure about controlling the empties at this time…I would have to read up on this…actually…the more I think about it there may be alot better and easier way to achieve the function I mentioned the empties for. As far as texturing the various “cards” or “plates” you would have to select each one and create a new material for it. The tutorial section of the Blender3D website seems to be down at this time but there use to be a good tutorial on this subject using dice as an example. Each side of the dice (cube) was selected and a new material was made for each. I will keep an eye out but in the meantime you can look around the forum…I am sure that you will come across something.
Cheers,
Landis
I tried various ways of animating static particles with a lattice, but with no success.
I’ve found it out a while ago there are multiple tuts about assigning to the “cards”. but I can’t seem to get your story about those empties.
So if you you might find it out. please let me know. Your help here was great.
Greets
Ps8
I thought I heard somewhere that static particles could be animated with a lattice. is this a myth?
It was in the release-notes for 2.34:
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Misc_improvements.355.0.html
I tried it without success. I used a plane, added some static particles and animated the plane using a lattice. Though I could see the vertices of the plane moving in the editing window there was no visible movement in the rendered result.
:o There’s an ‘animate’-button beneath the static-particles chooser. Once you click it, the particles actually start moving!
I solved THE mystery!