Thinking Particle attractor Cinema 4d

[annalord 0]

I am currently working on a project where a few thousand thinking particles are launched at a sphere. My goal is to have the particles orbit the sphere like space junk or a dense cluster satellites would orbit/surround a planet however I cannot seem to figure out how to create an attractor that effects thinking particles so that I can draw them toward the sphere- how can I create an attractor that effects thinking particles?

I am imagining something like this as how animating the scene would go-

1. Emitter throws a few thousand particles at the sphere

2. Emitter shuts off

3. Thinking particles that have already been emitted are sucked toward the sphere by some sort of attractor/gravitational field that I implement

4. Attractor/gravitational field pulls particles around the shape of the sphere and slowly rotates them around the orbit of the planet

Please let me know if you have any suggestions

Thanks!

Anna

[Mylenium 0]

No offense, but you seriously need to read the C4D help. This is basic stuff. See the attached example file that I hacked togbether in a few minutes. It's set up exactly as you desired. Though, as we already pointed out in your other post, there's a million other ways to do this and even if you insist on TP, there's lots of room to do this better using a surface emitter and forces or whatever....

 

http://www.mylenium.de/_temp/Debris_Attractor_00.zip

 

Mylenium

[JonnyB 0]

You're right, it is basic but I remember pulling my hair out trying to do simple things with thinking particles... it's tricky when you don't know exactly how each Xpresso node functions and links with others, sometimes the C4D help is good, other times it doesn't explain things in the way you need, especially if you are new to the whole thing.

 

Thanks for posting the scene Mylenium. Anna, my advice is to set aside a nice big chunk of time to doing some of the tutorials out there on TP, queue up a lot of varied ones and work through them, making notes if neccesary. After each one, plan and build a simple scene that is different to the one that you've just watched/created, but that uses the same techniques. As you learn more, try making more of your own original scenes that combines more of the things you learn. For the most part, this will prevent you from hitting brick walls as you will know that you can rewatch bits if you get stuck and before long you will have gained a good understanding of the system and the possibilities will be endless!

[gerkx 0]

Tim over at helloluxx has some really good TP tutorials.

http://www.helloluxx.com/category/cinema4d-thinking-particles/

 

Simon Homeldal also has done some great ones over at GSG as well:

http://greyscalegorilla.com/blog/tutorials/educators/simon-holmedal/

[annalord 0]

Thank you so much, this is all extremely helpful, infinitely appreciated!