Flock Modifier

Rambenwal

Hello folks!

I have a project that I am working on for a client, and I need to show a flock of different elements so I did a search on the internet and found a tutorial on youtube that is perfect for what I need. The plugin (free) is called Flock Modifier, it allows us to make particle objects flock like birds or a school of fish. I have contacted the creator Frank Willeke who currently lives in Germany to ask him if he had come up with an updated plugin for R21 and he responded the following:

Hi Joe, I currently don’t have the time to work on the plugin to R21. But it’s open-source, so basically anybody can do it. Maybe posting on the forums and asking for help there might work out?

Can anybody on this forum help? Here is the link for the youtube tutorial:

and Frank's Wileke's website is: https://www.frankwilleke.de/site/

I am Mac-based and hope that someone in the forum can help. Thank you all.

Cheers,

Joe García

fwilleke80

Hey Joe,

it might help adding the link to the plugin:
https://github.com/fwilleke80/flockmodifier

Greetings,
Frank

ferdinand

Hi,

isn't there a Python boid script somewhere in the Thinking Particles preset library? You probably won't find anyone who is willing to maintain someone else's code on such a minor matter, so this might be your best option.

FYI: I am pretty sure that the boid script was unoptimised (i.e. did not optimise the proximity evaluation of the boids). But given the fact that @fwilleke80 says "in less than 400 lines of code" on github, the same probably also applies to his code. C++ is faster than Python, but not that much faster (that it can negate exponential complexity) , so things will probably get slow rather quickly in both cases.

Cheers,
zipit

PluginStudent

The boid simulation in a Python Tag can be found on GitHub (scene, source).

Rambenwal

@fwilleke80 Thank you Frank. I was rushing because of a medical family situation. Thanks again.

fwilleke80

@zipit said in Flock Modifier:

isn't there a Python boid script somewhere in the Thinking Particles preset library? You probably won't find anyone who is willing to maintain someone else's code on such a minor matter, so this might be your best option.

FYI: I am pretty sure that the boid script was unoptimised (i.e. did not optimise the proximity evaluation of the boids). But given the fact that @fwilleke80 says "in less than 400 lines of code" on github, the same probably also applies to his code. C++ is faster than Python, but not that much faster (that it can negate exponential complexity) , so things will probably get slow rather quickly in both cases.

The FlockModifier is a lot faster than the Python/TP solution. Not only because of C++, but mostly because FlockModifier uses the standard particle system, which is simple but fast, while TP is complex and.. well, hell slow.

ferdinand

@fwilleke80 said in Flock Modifier:

The FlockModifier is a lot faster than the Python/TP solution. Not only because of C++, but mostly because FlockModifier uses the standard particle system, which is simple but fast, while TP is complex and.. well, hell slow.

Hm,

I did not mean the comment to be rude. I was just pointing out, that due to the complexity of a naive version of that algorithm, a switch to a Python version might not be as costly as one would think. I did not look at your code though, and certainly did not want to imply that it is bad. I was just going by the quoted part from github.

Cheers,
zipit

fwilleke80

I didn't take it as rude, don't worry