Jellyfish modeling update

Retooled the jellyfish head. Duplicated the revolved surface, scaled it and merged it with the original surface to get this hollow inside. For some reason, the surfaces don't interpenetrate anymore. I tried this again (although I used a slightly different method this time) because the result of my "workaround" didn't look too great from certain angles.

Also refined the animation of the jellyfish's propulsion. Currently, my rotation parameters (speed, amplitude, offset) are separate from the sine parameters controlling the wave traveling down the head. This might be a problem later on when I try to randomise them based on particle ID, so I'll have to solve that.

Here I'm doing a simple particle sim with a VOP POP handing out a random direction every second. The normal rotates from the current direction to the new direction in the space of a second. For wildly different direction, it looks too fast for a swarm of jellyfish, more like a swarm of ants.

My VOP POP (Thanks to Charles for helping me with the blending between vectors part!)

So the floor is basically taking only the integer component of a float (only 1 of 1.5 is taken). Fraction does the opposite, taking only the decimal components of a float. What the VOP POP does is taking the current time (in integers) and t+1, and mixing between them based on the current frame's position between t and t+1. This solution is limited by the fact that the vector changes every second, and not after a user defined duration. Hence I threw in a noise so the vectors don't all change at once. I also added the 1 to the time because at frame 1, all the vectors point in the same direction for some reason.

I also noticed that they seem to like a particular spot in world space and would constantly swarm in that direction. This would be a problem since the jelly fish are supposed to be inside my cables, so they have to stay within the cable geometry. 

After trying collision (which didn't work because the particles would head back in the same direction after bouncing away, creating this jackhammer like effect), I tried attractors instead. I ended up copying lines onto the surface of my object and have them point towards the centre, then using the points on those lines as attractors to keep the particles in more or less the same region while they swam around. I found that this would work if the speed scale of my VOP POP was lowered a tiny value, preventing the particles from speeding in a very unjellyfish-like way.

It's been a long post, so let me cheer you up with some (badly taken) photos of food:

California Monster Salad

 Chicken wrap for USD4 at Denny's

Pancake Puppies for USD2