Putting objects on a grid

[thingmaker]

Hello, does anyone know of a way to distribute objects on a grid (say the vertices of a plane)? For example if I create a grid of spheres in Formz,etc. and I bring it into EI to create a wave effect, it distorts the spheres. It seems it would be much easier to create a simple plane distort it and then apply the objects to the vertices afterwards. Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks. -Derryl

Sorry, no example. I guess neither the 'attach files' nor the 'Flash advanced uploader' are working.

[RichardJoly]

You have to use "Choose File" before "Attach File"... Forgive me if you did.

Could you rephrase the question? English is not my native language and I don't understand what you're trying to accomplish.

[thingmaker]

Richard, you could have fooled me, your english is excellent!

What I was trying to achieve was a 'wave' of spheres that I could control. In the first image is the basic effect I am going for.

I was able to do it using one sphere and locating it on each vertex with Placer Deposit and then warping the mesh/plane using deformations. This method kept the spheres from distorting into ellipsoid shapes.

http://www.4dmaze.com/images/other/wave/

The image upload simply does not work for me. The jpeg file is only 144k. This is what I get:

Error This upload failed Used 786.53K of your 500K global upload quota (Max. single file size: 7MB)

[RichardJoly]

I tried with an array of UberSpheres linked to a plane deformed with Runwave.

As long as they inherit position but not deformation, the spheres retains their shape.

I must get Placer deposit...

Spheres_on_wave.mov

[Tomas Egger]

Ola Thingmaker.

Probably CJ Berg’s Instancer plug-in + wave deformation can give similar results too.

Thanks

Tom

[yhloon]

to position a groups along a grid, try turn on the caps lock key to enable snapping, in the preferences there is a "grid and sacle" tab, where you can set the snapping grid

hope this help

[bwcc]

This is definitely a job for PlacerDeposit. It's a great plug-in, I use it for so much. I really wish EIAS could take over development of Placer so we could get an update. It's great as it is, but it could be so much better.

brian