animate a swarm of fishes

[themaxxer]

hello all

I have another problem with my interior animation...
there is a big aquarium with a lot of fishes. what's the best way to animate them? the best would be if they swim alone without a pathfollow contraint. I think PFlow would be the best thing, or maybe a crowd animation?

or maybe somebody can code a script to let the fishes swim in a box? they should act individually and should not collide.
I would pay for the work and the script.

best regards
themaxxer

[dellis]

Pete Draper has a great tutorial on his site for this...

http://www.3d-palace.com/xenomorphic...ish_school.htm

[themaxxer]

this looks really cool! thanks a lot.
I will make the tutorial and hope the best for my fish school.

best regards
themaxxer

[Shimakaze]

You may not even need to go that far. Using animated fish with a simple particle system with keep apart behavior would give good results as well and would be a lot faster. Doing that tutorial is a good way to learn about crowds though...

[themaxxer]

@shimakaze
thanks, but how to setup PFlow? the particles move but may not break out of the aquarium. I am very interested to this, but I don't know how to setup. may be you can help me?

thanks in advance
best regards
themaxxer

[instinct]

With Keep apart, a Speed by Icon operator (animate the icon along a path for general movement of the swarm) and make the path fitting within the box- size of the swarm.

Regards,
Thorsten

[jonnybefree]

With Keep apart, a Speed by Icon operator (animate the icon along a path for general movement of the swarm) and make the path fitting within the box- size of the swarm.

Regards,
Thorsten

do you ever got keep apart work nicely?
bet i'am doin it wrong, but never had luck with lots of particles avoid each other..

[instinct]

Well it'S pretty tricky to setup in many cases. Esp the limits tend to be tough to get right. If you wanna get into it get PFlow Tools Box#1 + Box#3. They are seriously amazing.

Regards,
Thorsten

[jonnybefree]

did you try'd the physix in box 2?

[instinct]

a bit during the beta yup. Very very very cool stuff. Pretty amazing to play with. And incredibly flexible (as some of the samples demonstrate). The only drag is that on x64 systems the PhysX integration is a bit of a hack as physx isnt natively on x64 YET afaik.

Regards,
Thorsten