Particles limits
My will is to implement feathers on the body of a dinosaur. To illustrate the difficulty I face, I designed a small example : A round cube for the body and modified cubes but different for the feathers.
I parameterized the particles as so:
It works fine, one feather on every face. Really fine. I can comb the feather and the ley the the direction I want.
384 is the exact number of faces of the round cube. If the number is bigger then some particles are set at the same places.
I introduced a vertex group to reduce the area the feathers are. Then some feathers share the same location as shown:
When the number of particles by face is set, the total number of particles should be treated as a maximum, not as a strict limit to reach.
2 Comments
With nodal systems being expanded to take over more and more tasks including particles, I doubt the current dedicated particle system will receive any feature updates, if not simply be dropped eventually as the particle nodes mature.
I did not find a way to do the same with nodes. It is easy to spread objects on the surface of another object, but when it comes to orient them to follow a certain logic as feathers do, not oriented in the same direction but depending on where they are on the body, I did not find a way to do it.
This becomes more complex when you animate the body, the feathers should not be deformed, but their orientation should change following the body movement.
If anybody knows a way tho do that I would be pleased to be given a link to a tutorial or guide.
The last constraint I have is that I must be able to export the object in high resolution to be machined as a real object.
It is with the particle that I have been able to go the furthest, but with difficulties :
I can also add that the particle instance modifier, despite the fact that it can only distribute one object along particles and not a collection of objects, do not orient the feather in the same way as done in the particle system when the same object is selected.