Dynamic Displacement on Boids - can it be done?

Support Particles and Physics Simulations
1

OK - I’m creating an animation of cells wandering around the surface of a bone - ostioblasts and ostioclasts if you’re interested.

They are boid particles.

I thought I could create the animation of each individual cell using a displacement map - so I’ve got a texture making various bits of the cell stick out further - the texture is set to global so as the cell moves past the texture different bits of it stick out and it goes squidgy squidgy squidgy as it moves along.

except that it doesn’t.

it works on the original cell model, but the particles, though moving around, remain rigid.

I’ve tried attaching the texture to a moving empty. I’ve tried moving the original cell objects and empty to the same layer as the particle system.

But it doesn’t work.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

2

It does work if you set the displace modifier on the particle to object and add that object to the same group as the particle. Then use group deploy, not object, for the boids.

I do believe that all the particles will still be synchronized, but at least you get some animated displace action.

Attachments

266_displace_move_particles.blend (175 KB)

3

Thanks for your help - I hadn’t thought of using “group”. I was thinking I might have to have all the cells as objects in the game engine with their own logic to walk around - but this is much easier.