Growing fur for a TF in Blender3d

To see what I’m talking about… here’s the link: [link]

Problem: I understand that I can controll the particle system in blender3d by using a vertex weight paint on the model. What I don’t understand (but maybee this isn’t a feature supported in blender3d) is how I can interpolate the vertex weights to allow the particle system to “grow” fur as the animation progresses.

Help would be appreciated. Thank You!

Hmm… you could try making an animated texture that progressivly makes hair grow, then use that to control the growth of hair by using one of the settings to use textures to control emission.

Aligorith

You could also possibly use RVK’s on Curve Guides; stretch the curves and ‘grow’ the hair.

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How might you do this for something that uses Vertex weight paint? The thing I’m trying to change is not a material. It’s just a group of verticies that have values ranging from 0 to 1 in floating point format.

Interesting proposal, but I believe that the use of rvk’s and avk’s died out when blender replaced them with shape keys. Do you believe that a shape key can hold more than just coordinate information, but vertex weight values as well?

Curves still use RVK’s. In Edit mode hit I in the 3D window and choose “Curve”. You can only set weighted CV’s on NURBS Curves.

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Problem is, I don’t use nurbs. I therefore cannot access what you are describing. But just in case I wasn’t clear, I’ve attached an image.

Attachments


You’d really need animated weight maps to do what you are asking, but blender does not support them right now.

Fligh is suggesting the use of curve guides. You could add a Nurbs curve, bezier curve, or path and under its properties set it to act as a ‘Curve Guide’. You can then animate it using RVKs so that it changes the length/shape of your particles (i.e. so they hide in one shot, but appear to grow to the next).

The model does not have to be of a curve type to use curve guides.

Mhm. I don’t think that the curve guides would help me there. I am going to learn python and then create a script that would store and interpolate between those values.

Question is, where can I access this data based upon object and vertex group?