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I currently have a simple geometry nodes setup where I have instances arranged in a spherical shape using Distribute Points on Faces.

What I'd like to do is tween these instances so their positions move to "assemble" along a curve I have in my scene over say 250 frames.. as shown:

enter image description here

I thought I could get the points of the curve then create a translation vector between each instance position and a corresponding curve point, but because the instance numbers are governed by Distribute Points on Faces's density parameter, I've been unable to get that to work.

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  • $\begingroup$ sorry, but it is totally unclear how the animation should look like. like that? [1]: i.stack.imgur.com/oUzqU.gif or that? [1]: i.stack.imgur.com/HGJdR.gif please add a link to an animation or video how it should look like. thx $\endgroup$
    – Chris
    Jul 17 at 7:10
  • $\begingroup$ Hi, Mo, welcome.. Thanks for sharing your file. For future reference, remember the folks looking at it are complete strangers to your project, and need as much help as you can give them to orient themselves. Please strip shared .blend files down to the absolute minimum required to illustrate your problem, and name things as descriptively as you can. $\endgroup$
    – Robin Betts
    Jul 17 at 7:21
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks @RobinBetts, I'll make sure to do so $\endgroup$
    – Mo Kargas
    Jul 17 at 7:48
  • $\begingroup$ @Chris It's the second one. Apologies I'm new to this. Can I add your second gif to the post to improve it? $\endgroup$
    – Mo Kargas
    Jul 17 at 7:54
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    $\begingroup$ @Mo .. np. Good Idea, Done. (You can use the tools provided to do that) blender.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1083/35559 It tlooks as though Chris's answer will make mine redundant :) $\endgroup$
    – Robin Betts
    Jul 17 at 7:59

2 Answers 2

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Basically this node setup does the animation:

enter image description here

you can reuse it and adapt the map range to let the points follow even more curves.

here is the whole overview for the animation:

enter image description here

result:

enter image description here

the "magic" does the mix vector nodes, which just mixes two vectors. By animating the factor, we can get this kind of animation. Of course you could even tweak this better with e.g. a float curve to make it even more dynamic, but i wanted to keep it simple so that it is easily understandable.

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The distributed points have generated unique ID 's, but their Indices (the leftmost column in the frame of the spreadsheet) are a serial set, 0 -> (number of particles-1).

So, (although you may want a more sophisticated transition than a simple mix,) there's no obstruction to sampling a 1-1 corresponding position on a curve for each particle:

enter image description here

Adjusting the factor in the Mix, here, gives a linear interpolation between indexed positions on a sphere, and corresponding indexed positions on a curve:

enter image description here

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