This node creates a vector based falloff that associates to every object a float that is equal to inverse the distance from it to some controller object, that distance can be 3D or 1D.
[0,1]
range, So some distances will be
clamped to 1
or 0
. We conclude that objects that are closer to
the controller will have a large float that doesn’t exceed 1
and
as objects gets away, their floats starts to fade till it becomes
zero at some point. This float is added to the scale of the
controller object, so scaling the controller object will result in
increase in the floats of every object.In this illustration, I set the z-position of the points of a line to
their falloff floats which formed some kind of triangle. As we said, the
float is equal to inverse the distance from the point to the position of
the input object which I placed at (0,0,0)
in this illustration. Let
the distance be D
, then inverse of the distance is 1-D
. So point
(0,0,0)
will have a D
of 0
(because distance between (0,0,0)
and
(0,0,0)
is zero) and a 1-D=1-0=1
, that’s why the point in the middle
have a z-location of 1
. Point (1,0,0)
on the other hand have a D
of 1
and a 1-D=1-1=0
, that’s why the point at (1,0,0)
has a
z-location of zero. Points further away will have a negative inverse
distances and thus negative z-locations. But as we said, values are
clamped to [0,1]
range and so negative floats will be zeroes and
floats larger than one will be equal ones (We currently don’t have
values larger than one).
What I am going to do is add some value to the floats which result in inverse distances larger than one which will then be clamped to one, since the inverse distance is the z-location of the points, adding a value to the float will result in moving the triangle in the z-direction. The illustration shows what happens when this value is added when clamping is present.
Furthermore, multiplying the floats by some value will change the rate of changing of the floats and thus have a wider based triangle, which is shown in the illustration as scaling the triangle which is what multiplication graphically denote.
In the node inputs, input Offset is the value that gets added while input Width is the value that gets multiplied.
Shaded area is the actual points position after clamping, outline is the values before clamping. Notice how outline exceed one and deceed zero:
[0,1]
range, So some distances
will be clamped to 1
or 0
. We conclude that objects that are
closer to the controller along some axis will have a large float
that doesn’t exceed 1
and as object gets away, their floats starts
to fade till it becomes zero at some point. This float is multiplied
by the scale of the controller object, so scaling the controller
object will result in increase in the floats of every object.Use the same reasoning as the sphere option to understand this better.