Moho Forum

Is it possible to create a cloud of animated flies with particles (like in tutorial 6.2.2) that have random movements within the cloud? My attempts have them either bursting out from a center point and shooting off in all directions or drifting in one particular linear direction. What I want is the illusion that they are swarming around an object but was trying to avoid animating each one by hand. I can and will do that if I have to, but I was thinking there might be a better way.

Also, even though I checked randomized playback on the particles tab, they are all animating the same. Do I have to use bones to make that work correctly or does each fly have to be a single layer (each is a four layer group right now)?

The randomized playback option only offsets the starting frame of a particle's existing animation (the individual particle layer's animation).

So, you animate each particle (each fly group, in your case) separately to the particle animation effects - no getting away from it, I'm afraid.

However, this can be quite effective with only simple looping animation, combined with the motion due to being a particle - one example is the second particle layers example on the Moho features page. Each bee has a simple in-place motion - up and down, or a simple circle movement, or something similar - added to the overall particle motion.
It's the particle equivalent of a walk cycle.

Whether or not you use particles, possibly you could use Macton/CrashCore's curve-to-layer-translation script to draw your individual motion paths rather than manual keyframing.

Regards, Myles.

Interesting. I will install the script and see if I can make heads or tails of it. It appears that it will do more or less what I am looking for.

Also, regarding the randomized feature - I assumed that is what it was supposed to do but it didn't offset ANY of the particles. They all started on frame 1 of their cycle. What I did was create a completely different cycle for each 'particle' I added to the particle folder and that worked (kind of). Now maybe that's what you were saying and I just didn't understand correctly, but if so I see no reason to click on the randomize check box since I manually performed the function.

When I have more time I will play with the particle features so I can better understand them, for now I'll do it the hard way.