tendril visuals/ tentacles/ strands

An interesting way to make tendrilly visuals, using point instancing & noise (of course)

  1.  First create a noise TOP with a resolution of say 500x500 and turn OFF monochrome. Also set the pixel format to 32bit. Set the Scale X to 0.
  2. To this attach a Lumablur TOP.
  3. Also to the noise TOP and connecting to the 2nd input of the Lumablur, create a ramp TOP & set it to be horizontal. (You could also set the noise's Scale Y to 0 instead & set this ramp to be vertical)
  4. Attach a Pointilise comp, from the Palette
  5. Attach a Blur to this & finally a null, which I'm calling POS. For Position..
  6. Instance a shape - something simple like a box will do, use the POS for the position & set r,g,b to the x,y,z respectively
  7. Now increase the values of the lumablur & the pointilise nodes - the instanced objects should be distributed in a sort of tendrilly/tentaclely way now. The blur after the pointilise helps create a little definition to the overall shape.
  8. You could add further complexity to the strands by adding different values on the ramp, animating the phase of the ramp...animating the noise...It's quite a robust instancing method!



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