So while working on my mini series for Mograph, I ran into an old problem. If I have a bunch of clones, how do I select a certain clone, or more specifically in my case, the LAST clone. And either attach something to it. Or perhaps hide all the other clones?
So Let’s dive into a couple of approaches.
First Method: Xpresso
Use Xpresso to get the last clones position from the cloner. You can get the “Data” node from the “Motion graphics” group.
Connect the cloner who’s data you want to read with the “object” port.
Then use the “Count” ( number of clones) to subtract 1 from it with the math node and plug it into the “index” port, this is the port that decides which clones info to output. This gives you the last clone. Now you can read it’s position, and feed that into a null of geometry of whatever you need.
However! I had a problem with this. I was using the blend mode to blend between 2 different cloners parameters. And while clone count is an integer, the blend function in the cloner was interpreting it as a real number and giving me decimal values.. which resulted in problems when blending.
See how the red roof sinking in sometimes? that’s because the red roof is being positioned using numbers with decimal places, not integers. And it seems like the blend mode in cloner can only work like this and has no work around.
Here is a video of it blending, so you can see what the problem is:
So I had to find a work around. And I did!
Second Method: Clone onto the Cloner
I used a cloner to clone the red rectangles onto the other cloner object ( using the original cloner as a source in axis mode).
Then I used a formula effector to hide all the clones that are not the last one.
id-(count-2)And I set the Formula effector to only affect visibility.
And Voilia! it all works! Perfect sticking with Blend mode on cloner.
I used the cloner to clone onto the last clone!
Cheers,
Aleksey
