Having just seen milo’s particle prettiness at http://www.vimeo.com/1248385
I’m quite jealous because I’ve been grappling with the challenge of trying to draw proper (line or mesh) trails behind moving particles for a while trying various approaches and gave up deciding it was beyond me. I would post the patches I made on the way but to be honest they are complete garbage. I was trying to do it using queues and the line node but realised that doesn’t work because it just draws lines between all the points it’s given, without any way of splitting into the respective particle that it’s from. Then I tried doing it as a mesh but that’s a bit beyond me.
I’m not expecting anyone just to give their hard work but some idea of the method I should be using would really help…thanks…
wow…west you are a genius. many thanks. And finally I found out what binsize was used for! That was another one that I never quite got. And in this case would’ve made all the difference. But yeah I never thought of swapdim either.
swapdim - thats the way. i used a kind of verlet integration instead of a queue. because otherwise the trail will disapear if the particles don´t move. and i did the the trails with a rope - its just 2D but you can put a texture on it. so i did a texture transform on the trails (the “pumping” lights appear on position change)
in easiest way, a verlet integration does something like a “chain” (as used in this video) in complex its for cloth dynamics, bones, kinetics, etc… there was also a discussion and a module at the forum:
