Is is possible to make all particles face 1 coordinate?

#1

Trying to have a few thousand objects all face the same object/XYZ coordinate in the scene.

Is there a way to do this with the particles/object?

Think of it as thousands of enemies facing/surrounding 1 good guy.

I could use arrays and empties but the results are not random enough. It’s funny since my last post was about “advanced arrays”.

If you can think of another way to do this, I’d really appreciate it if you shared your technique. I was wondering if the “Asset Sketcher” could accomplish this, asked the same question there, waiting for a reply.

#2

You can have a hair system that emits from verts, non randomly in the sense that only one object emits per vert so you can control the spacing density that way. Essentially you extrude a circle (With n verts) up on z and make a single loop cut. You make a vertex group out of the that loop cut. You add a hair system with the number of hairs equal to n. In advanced to set it emit from verts, non random. You have it emit on global z (the normals do a strange tging and flip their axis, so you actually turn normal to 0) You set the density to the vertex group. You can then do your typical random scaling and random rotation and have them all circled and facing a central object. Kind of hard to explain, here’s a screenshot and sample blend. The bottom one is the “perfect” alignment with a system, and the top one has some random sizing and rotation.
Blend on dropbox (1 mb)

randfac.jpg1533×923 211 KB

#3

Thank you for the response.

Unfortunately with this method, the farther you are from the center, the more vertices you need and the formation isn’t random. It’s still a lot of manual work to create outer rings with more vertices and/or copy+subdivide. I wonder if…

Okay I’m back!
Using the Spiral curve addon, that’s no longer an issue. I don’t have to set the number of particles manually for each ring I create to match the number of vertices. Selecting random vertices and doing some sort of “random proportional edit” (after creating a fake/placeholder vertex in the center and selecting it) seems to do the trick.

I guess no matter how you look at it, there is still a lot of manual work involved. I should also try doing half circles (or shorter curves) along with arrays and empties to see if it makes them look more random.

I tried a couple of things but because of the high number, the particle system seems to be the most efficient way.

#4

You can use Billboards and have them face the camera. You can also add a TrackTo constraint to the original particle and all the copies will also face the camera or target object.

#5

That’s a really good one too, I’ll definitely try it.

Thanks for the suggestions.

#6

I found a way like this

Any other ideas?