place many objects in circle or along the path of a node (copy-and-paste edition)

mCasual

This Daz Script will place evenly around a circle of radius 18cm oriented to face the Front Camera ... all the nodes in the parent node named Ringo ( used to be Ring but the name was taken )

in fact once Ringo stole the nodes from Ring , please remain seated, Ring was deleted ! Such a waste such a waste.

//Scene.selectAllNodes(true); // legacy from a totally different script

node = Scene.findNodeByLabel( "Ringo" );

nodes = node.getNodeChildren();

r = 18; //all you have to decide and modify is this line

n = ( nodes.length );

twoPi = Math.PI * 2;

arcA = twoPi / 1; // and you could get Arcs instead of full circle by subdividing by 4 for example

stepA = arcA / n;

a = 0;

var toDeg = 180 / Math.PI;

v = new DzVec3( 0, 0, 0 );

for( i = 0; i < n; i++ )

{

node = nodes[i];

v.x = r * Math.cos( a ); // the keen eye will have notice that we could use

v.y = r * Math.sin( a ); // other functions than these and get any 2D path

v.z = -2; // and z doesn't need to be assigned a constant value

node.setWSPos( v );

node.getXRotControl().setValue( 0 );

node.getYRotControl().setValue( 0 );

node.getZRotControl().setValue( a * toDeg + 90 )

a += stepA;

}

 

mCasual

if you animate the position of a node, say the position of the left foot of a figure.

... see below for the working script

mCasual

script used to place those 160 subd cubes along the path of Gabrielle's right foot

//node containing the things to place along the path

node = Scene.findNodeByLabel( "Ringo" );

nodes = node.getNodeChildren();

n = ( nodes.length );

tick = Scene.getTimeStep() * 1; //making sure it's a number

nFramesPerObject = 3; //spacing the dots along the path

target = Scene.getPrimarySelection(); //selected node is the path

for( i = 0; i < n; i++ )

{

node = nodes[i];

t = i * tick;

v = target.getWSPos( t * nFramesPerObject );

node.setWSPos( v );

}

mCasual

if we replace 

node.setWSPos( v );

with

node.setWSPos( t * nFramesPerObject );

then the subd-cubes will move from their location at frame 0 to their destination keyframe along the path

now what could be their initial position at frame 0 , that's a good question

AH! in gabrielle's shoe ! 

she could drop footprints !

the foorprints will be dropped say 2 frames after a foot reaches the floor

and the footprints are primitive planes  or very low-poly custom-made for the given shoe

 

mCasual

mcjRibbons and mcjTransport 2 of my free scripts to make ribbons and tubes that are built along the paths of nodes in a Daz Studio scene