Drop Bones into shape of text.

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice. I want to “throw” some bones and have them wind up in the shape of text, i.e. “Hello”. I tried a keyed particle system and it did not work too well. One problem is that the bones were standing up instead of laying down.

Is there anyway to do this with a particle system? Or will I have to animate the 40+ bones individually to get the effet I want?

Thanks for any hints or advice.

You could try using rigid bodies instead of particles. One way would be to make all your bones active rigid bodies and then place them to form the text. You would need to turn off gravity or place passive rigid body plane under them. Use something like Wind and Turbulence force fields to move the bones away and then bake the rigid body physics of all the bones to keyframes. In the graph editor select all the keyframes and press S then X then -1 to reverse the animation.

If you want the bones to bounce around before forming the text you could have the bones fall onto a passive rigid body plane, bake the rigid body physics to keyframes and then manually adjust the bones at the end so they form the text.

@Alank. Thanks! I didn’t see this till just now. Thank you for the advice on scaling keyframes in the graph editor to -1. I think I will be using one or more of the suggestions you offered. Many thanks!

  • nvasuez1623