Hi!

I want to create a cloud of balloons (huge one) all attached to the ground via strings. I don't want to model each and every one of them seperately, so I'm looking for a procedural approach. Anyone has an idea?

Thanks in advance,


Phong

I got an approach in mind but don't know exactly how to resolve this:

1. Emit a particle cloud. (clear)
2. Procedurally generate curves from a specified point to each particle. (howto?)
3. Instance balloon geometry with particle points. (clear)

Can anyone give a hint?

You could use the Add sop and the group function to connect points.

Rather than using particles you could create a single curve and copy that to scattered points on a sphere. Then use stamp functions to vary the shape and length of each curve.

Cool, I will give this a try right away! Thanks a lot for the quick response!

I tried the approach with Add and Group sops, but this way I still got to define a lot of things manually. Instead of copying to the points on a sphere, I used IsoOffset (as fog volume) and copied my dummy balloons into that volume. Now how do I get a curve generated for each balloon which is connected to the balloon on the one end and to the ground on the other side??

Sounds like a really interesting project. Its got me to thinking how on you could have the balloons anchored down by strings under tension.

rob

Well I haven't thought about that so far, I assumed the balloons have neither an upwards nor a downwards tension, so they're all floating in the air. I've even not planned to make them moving, I just try to figure out how to create strings from the ground to the balloon for hundreds and thousands of balloons - and then I will stark making them dynamic

Well how about this, Make one balloon ,create a SDF volume for it, copy the balloon as many times as you like. Take your balloon plus strings into DOPs for some wire solver / collision action ?

rob

But how do I get the wires being generated from each balloon to the ground?

I currently try getting this done with copy and stamping, but I'm not really familiar with the stamping functionality. How do I extract the position of the current template position and put that position into my curve geometry?

Phong
But how do I get the wires being generated from each balloon to the ground?

i've made simple example using Add SOP

Hi!
I could not help to make those balloons move and float around.
I tweaked tamte's exemple file…
:wink:

Hi Tamte,

i like your example! could you please explain why you used the “skip to the Nth point” with an increment value of “$N/2” in the add SOP ?
I can't find a helpful description in the help file …

best regards,

Manuel

asnowcappedromance
…could you please explain why you used the “skip to the Nth point” with an increment value of “$N/2” in the add SOP ?…

imagine you have set of points and each of them has its point number
let's say 10 points with numbers 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9

then Skip every Nth point means:
it will connect every point with point which point number is Nth from it
so if N is 2 it will connect points:
0,2,4,6,8
and
1,3,5,7,9

if N is 3:
0,3,6,9
and
1,4,7
and
2,5,8

if N is 5:
0,5
1,6
2,7
3,8
4,9

in my example there is a set of points representing baloons
and set of points representing anchor points on the ground
let's say 10 baloons and 10 anchors
then merging them together will give me 20 points with point numbers 0-9 for baloons and 10-19 for anchors
then using Skip every Nth point set as $N/2 means:
$N is total number of points (20)
$N/2 == 10
so it will skip to 10th from each point and connect them
0,10
1,11
2,12
3,13
.
.
.
9,19

so it will connect each baloon with corresponding anchor

hi Tamte,

that was very coherent, thx a lot.

:wink:

Tamte that was awesome!

Now I want to tie them all together (like they're anchored about all to one point), so I scaled down the anchor points so they form a tiny area on the ground. All points are still connected by straight lines, but how do I get those lines to look like wires again without having too simulate?´

Thanks in advance!


Phong

i am not sure what you mean by that, but maybe something like this?

Woooow! That's awesome!

I meant exactly this!

if you increase the subdivisions of your wires with for example a resample SOP, you could also play with the spring SOP to move those wires smoothly.
there's a nice sidefx tutorial about seagrass that you might check out:

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=944&Itemid=257 [sidefx.com]