Random particle wiggle on surface?

[Ross Franks]

Hey there just wondering how do I get particles to randomly wiggle on a surface?

ie at the moment I have the small spheres on the larger spheres but cannot get them to randomly wiggle (and not disappear through the larger spheres), see here…

https://media.giphy.com/media/9SIO6YCB1ehptArw1b/giphy.gif

How do I go about doing that?

Thanks in advance.

[spikeyxxx]

Hi rfranks, in this specific case, like if you want some small spheres, to stick on the surface of a sphere, the easiest way is probably by using Constraints on the small spheres, like this:

[tanya]

Did you try using hair particles? Set the render shape of the hair to the sphere and then play with the hair dynamics (mass, stiffness, randomness).  When I tried they rolled around, but were slightly imbedded in the larger sphere.  If you want to use plain particles check the gravity setting, I think the default is falling.

[Ross Franks]

@tanya53 Thanks, when I tried the hair settings none of the smaller spheres moved around, I’ve also found out you can’t keyframe particle settings, is that right?

[tanya]

the above is with hair particles, I think you can’t or I don’t know how to key frame particles, but you can do a lot with force fields to control how they move and set things like initial velocity, etc.  I don’t know that much about them just played around some.  I don’t know if this is what you are after or not.

[tanya]

Here is a screen shot of the above particle system.

[Ross Franks]

@tanya53 thanks but not the small spheres rotating on themselves but rotating around the larger sphere’s surface, pretend their ants walking over a planet randomly

[Ross Franks]

In the end I was shown this process in 2.8 with particles and animation nodes by Omar Ahmad in the CG Evolution Facebook group…

https://gph.is/g/ZxJMOyE

Just remember to click the little button beside the *Node Seed* value in the Sidebar panel to show the count option in the animation nodes. And adjust the Scale or Amplitude values to get the result your after.

[Author]

Posts