Trouble with armature+mesh then particles

Support Animation and Rigging
1

I scoured the forum, finding lots and lots of threads about mesh+armature+particles but couldn’t find one dealing with this issue.

My original aim is to have a cloud of butterflies flaping its way across the screen.

First I model a simple butterflie. Add a two bones armature to it, using vertex groups, so it flaps nicely. So far no problem at all.
Then, I parent my mesh to an emiter plane using duplivert.
In my 3d preview window everything is exactly how i want it to be: lots of butterflies flie across the screen.
But when I actually render it, the (particule)wings are miles off the (particule)bodies.
The resulting animation doesn’t look like a cloud of butterflie flying across the screen AT ALL. To be honnest it doesn’t look like anything.

I tried tweaking everything i could, with no result.

Did anyone ever had the same problem?

2

Parent your mesh to the armature, then the armature to the duplicator?

Aligorith

3

That would seem to be the logical way of doing it.

However, I parented the mesh to the emitter, and with either the mesh “parented-to-the-armature” … or just using an armature-modifer they both work.

Interesting, that the armature deform and animation works on the dupliverted meshes !

Here’s a simple test file :

http://www.4shared.com/file/4634973/18a5e95c/butfly241.html

Mike

4

I tried parenting the armature to the emiter which seemed quite clever , yet, no changes.

I tried the simple test file you made and funny enought, in 3d view, it works perfectly, then once you anim/render, the wings go bezerk again. Actually 1 out of the 4 butterflie doesn’t behave too badly. It might the not-particule one.

Does it work well on your computer? Is it because of my blender setup? I’m stuck here.

5

Hmm… time to do some bug hunting.

(if any other dev looks here, it is probably something in convertblender.c)

Aligorith

6

I’m running WinXp.

I tested the file with both 2.42a and a CVS build of Oct-9.

What O.S. / Blender version are you running?

I’m not sure what you mean by “berserk” … if you can post either an .avi or a couple of .jpg’s of what you’re getting it might help

Mike

7

I run blender 2.42a under WinXP but I must admit I don’t know what CVS is.

Sorry I misspelt Bezerk, ok “crazy” is the proper word.

here’s two screen shot of what i get with your file then with mine:

http://www.nickyandkevin.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/yours.jpghttp://www.nickyandkevin.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/mine.jpg

8

It’s ok, I knew what you meant by Bezerk, just wasn’t sure what it looked like.

‘CVS’ refers to the daily builds that are compiled from bugs being fixed / new features being added. You can get a Windows build from this link (note there seems to be problem with downloading it using I.E.) (The file is the ‘win32BlenderXXXX.zip’ file)

I created another file even simpler, just a cube, and I can clearly see what you mean now.

I submitted the file to the bug tracker, if you want to add your file, or keep tabs on the progress of the bug the link is here

https://projects.blender.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=5108&group_id=9&atid=125

The workaround for the moment would seem to be to duplicate the mesh+armature manually using SHIFT-D, and forego the dupliverts feature.

Mike

9

Ha well. Just my luck.
It’s the first time I get stuck enough with blender to join a forum to find a way out, and it would have to be a bug.
Nevermind, it’s a really cool forum anyway. I spend hours reading through it.

Thanks for helping.

I might still try to make those wings flap usings empties (I don’t have a clue how it works yet) and if that still doesn’t do, i’ll have to duplicate them.

cheers again.