The particle system

ONE Setting up the Flock

Load in Fruit.lwo into Layout and in the Scene Editor set everything to be Hidden by OpenGL and the Renderer. Add a Flock Generator and adjust the Count and Size on all axis to get a decent amount of Agents to attach our fruit to. In the Agents tab make sure all the Ranges are set to 0 metres to ensure they properly stick to our text. Add a Flock Director to the Fruit_Text layer and set its type to ‘Arrive’. Calculate, and you’ll see all of the agents fly towards and stick to the Fruit text.

two the arrive director

Add a Flock Director with an Arrive type to the Yum_text layer. With a default weight of 1.0, the Agents will stick perfectly to these layers, but if we envelope the weights to go from 1.0 to 0.0 over the course of 24 frames the agents will start to move elsewhere. Do this on the Fruit_text layer, then copy the envelope and paste it into the weight for the Yum_text layer, but invert the values. Now calculate and you’ll see the agents attach to the Fruit text; move away from the Fruit and transfer to the Yum text.

Three Multiple Objects

In the Flock Generator’s properties add an Instance Generator. Start adding the different types of fruit objects and set their type to Particles. In order to limit the amount of fruit per object we need to adjust the Weight percentage. Basically, adjusting the percentage will result in more or less of that object being attached to the available agents. Be sure the adjust the scale, rotation, and offset of each object to make them look more randomised. Calculate and enjoy!