Particle chair placement?

I thought I would try using particles to place 1 chair around a table.
Well I was wrong . at least as far as I figured it.
I tried spline,particle array, and particle mesh.
No success I also should mention I tried a particle tag on the chair as well still no success.
So besides turning it into a particle mesh and defeating the entire exercise of trying to save the poly count.
Does anyone have any ideas how to align the chairs at the table?
Thank you for reading and sharing any ideas or hopefully a solution.
Chair placement.jpg
 
Hiroto’s Referenced Particles script lets you adjust the position, scale, and rotation of individual particles. I haven’t used it since a couple of years ago, at which time I made the attached step-by-step directions for future reference. In the picture, the original “R” is the middle one at 0 0 0.

I just tried it out following the steps and it worked as expected.

I'm not sure this is the best solution to your current model, but if you have the script it might solve a future problem or inspire an idea that precisely varies copies of the original object. It's a useful and logical extension of the particle tool.

https://www.cheetah3d.com/forum/index.php?threads/10374/
3Rs.jpg
 
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Hiroto’s Referenced Particles script lets you adjust the position, scale, and rotation of individual particles. I haven’t used it since a couple of years ago, at which time I made the attached step-by-step directions for future reference. In the picture, the original “R” is the middle one at 0 0 0.

I just tried it out following the steps and it worked as expected.

I'm not sure this is the best solution to your current model, but if you have the script it might solve a future problem or inspire an idea that precisely varies copies of the original object. It's a useful and logical extension of the particle tool.

https://www.cheetah3d.com/forum/index.php?threads/10374/
Thanks: Joel.
This is very interesting. I just spent an hour messing around with the script but can't get my head around the proper use.
any help appreciated.
Reference particles.jpg
Thanks for the graphic helper but I'm not getting it.
 
Keeping in mind that it's been a couple of years since I tried the script, maybe I can clarify. Looking at your screen shot, you used a plane instead of a wireframe box. The four planes arranged around the table suggest the intended particle positions, but I don't know how they got there.

1) Maybe place the original basic chair particle at 0 0 0. Burn the transform. Typically, Particle systems and Creator objects expect things to start with 0 0 0 position. Try using a wireframe box to enclose the chair like the one around the R, instead of a plane. (A plane might be OK, but the box seemed to be more intuitive for transforming.)
2) Be sure to collapse the box and burn the box's transform, so 0 0 0.
3) Copy and paste three more boxes, re-positioning and rotating all four boxes around the table.
4) Group the boxes (as you did)
5) Get the script (as you did)
6) Drag & drop the group into the script (as you did)
7) Make the original chair particle the child of the script (as you did?)
8) It should look about right, but tweak any boxes as needed and click the Update button.

I don't know how you got the symmetrical doubling of chairs. The parallel orientations indicate three boxes (planes) didn't get rotated.

If these tips don't fix it, attach the file to a subsequent post. If they do fix it, please follow up with a description of what was wrong so anyone else can read this and avoid the same mistake. The reason I make the picture directions for myself is that it takes me so long to get some multi-step process to work, with the right sequence and settings, and I don't want to forget and need to re-learn it in the future. So many of Hiroto's scripts are brilliant, but I have struggled to get them to work because I overlooked a critical step or detail.
 
An afterthought: The planes aren't collapsed, so the position transform wouldn't be burned (step 2). More likely, your first chair is not at 0 0 0 (step 1). No idea why there's eight chairs, your picture doesn't show the Referenced Particles expanded to reveal the child particle chair. Are there two of them?

As noted, rotate three planes/boxes.

One more thing: an advantage of using this script rather than a Ring Modifier is that you can tweak the individual chairs' positions to be slightly off-axis, not geometrically perfect, more like people had sat in them and then left them a little askew. More natural, realistic.
 
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It´s an easier set-up with particle mesh and a cylinder (tube=no cover at top+bottom).
Set particle mesh Type: Polygons - you might need to add a transform modifier to your chair to appear upright and looking to the center, which isn´t a big deal:
Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie.gif


Cheers
Frank
 
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It´s an easier set-up with particle mesh and a cylinder (tube=no cover at top+bottom).
Set particle mesh Type: Polygons - you might need to add a transform modifier to your chair to appear upright and looking to the center, which isn´t a big deal:
Cheers
Frank
Thanks Frank this works.
 
An afterthought: The planes aren't collapsed, so the position transform wouldn't be burned (step 2). More likely, your first chair is not at 0 0 0 (step 1). No idea why there's eight chairs, your picture doesn't show the Referenced Particles expanded to reveal the child particle chair. Are there two of them?

As noted, rotate three planes/boxes.

One more thing: an advantage of using this script rather than a Ring Modifier is that you can tweak the individual chairs' positions to be slightly off-axis, not geometrically perfect, more like people had sat in them and then left them a little askew. More natural, realistic.
This will take experimenting and study but I think I get it now? Except how to make a wire frame box...
 
A couple of days ago I replied to uncle808us with some notes from a model I worked on two years ago. I had used wireframe boxes to better visualize changes as I tweaked and updated, but default planes work fine. Here’s a simpler example with planes. The file is attached.

Usually either a Particle Mesh or just adding copies of chairs is the simplest approach. But if you have a lot of chairs (particles) and want them loosely but precisely arranged (or scaled), without multiplying the file size, this script might be useful.

rps.jpg
 

Attachments

  • rps.zip
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Usually either a Particle Mesh or just adding copies of chairs is the simplest approach. But if you have a lot of chairs (particles) and want them loosely but precisely arranged (or scaled), without multiplying the file size, this script might be useful.
Thanks again for the graphic and the file this will come in handy.
 
It’s a bit ridiculous that we’ve had support for instancing for years but still don’t have a non-kludgy way of doing this (of course we also still don’t have a nice way of adjusting instances in situ either — features 3dsmax and even Strata have had for 20 years.

Perhaps a cleaner way of doing this would be smart folders.
 
Re Podperson:

What is instancing? Is it what the Referenced Particles script does? (Manipulating particles individually). I am only familiar with Cheetah 3D so I have no experience with 3dsmax or Strata.

How might a non-kludgy C3D Instancing tool be useful? I have only used the Referenced Particles script once, just to see how it worked, but I’ve never found a compelling need for it. I figured a Particle Mesh or just scattered copies of an object would get the effect I wanted. If I wanted a room filled with 40 chairs, I might use a Particle Tag to slightly randomize the positions and rotations of the chairs to look more “lived in.”

Like uncle808us, I haven’t used Smart Folders. I read the Help description and figured I was OK without them. How could they be used for this purpose?

Is this somehow related to the Instance material node? I have only used this to randomize the colors of particles, but it has other functions I haven’t tried.

Thanks for the information.
 
I've always loved Bryce's randomize options. They didn't solve ALL problems, but they solved most of them. It would be wonderful to have options like this for working with a group of instances.

Screen Shot 2019-02-14 at 5.40.08 PM.png
 
@ uncle808us - a Smart Folder is basically a link to another C3D (or other importable 3d format) file.

There are many uses for this.
One easy example is you have model Xv2018. You need model Xv2018 to be part of many different C3D scenes so you import it into your scenes using a 'smart folder'.
Next year the model needs to be changed to Xv2019. You open that file make your changes. Then open any or all of your C3D scenes, and Xv2018 is updated to Xv2019 with no extra work.

Does that make sense?
There are a few gotcha's you have to be aware of, but that can be discussed in another thread.

hope that helps.
--shift studio.

oh, btw. the referenced particles script can be used with Smart Folders too.
 
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What is instancing? Is it what the Referenced Particles script does? (Manipulating particles individually)
Instancing basically means multiplying objects by creating references containing only the differential data (new location, rotation and scale).
Advantages are low memory footprint and the possibility to change all instances at once by modifying the reference object.
In other apps you can create manually a single instance and move it where you want.
This function is missing in Cheetah and the referenced particle script is a good workaround.

Of course Cheetahs particle systems are really instancing systems with limited freedom of distribution (most versatile means being the particle tag).
When double-clicking a particle system it turns into a "base particle object" with all particle properties frozen (but animatable with dynamics).
I suggested in the wish list to make the particle properties accessible there for manual editing.
 
chair_pile.png


Alternative solution: semi-random close-fitting particles.

Make a particle mesh and animate the particles using either Animation — Dynamics — Gravitation or Effectors — Attraction to get a pile or clump of particles just touching each other.

Throwing all of uncle808us’ chairs into a big pile is probably not what he had in mind, but sometimes it is desirable to have a bowl filled with marbles or a pile of rocks. Piles are organic 3D arrangements, like fractals are organic 2D patterns.

After making a pile, Tools — Particle — Particle -> Polygon can convert the particles to ordinary polygon objects for fine tuning, maybe as part of a Boolean.
 
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