I need to have 30 flocking bats in my choreography. I used the flock/birds and drop the bat on the flock manipulator and it worked. I had 30 flocking bats and everything was working well. Then a few days later, my bats were nolonger in the flock manipulator. I tried to delete the flocking and bats and start completely over, but my flocking will not work at all in my project now. If I open a competely new project, the flocking will work.

problem. I can't drop the bats in the flocking manipulator influence now, it will not populate at all in my needed project. I'm not sure how to get around this or correct this. Any ideas of why i can't get my flocking to work in my project now?

By the way, the animation is for the openining of a very independent ,full length feature film, so, I really need to assistance soon, i have a dead line. Thanks to all who can assist.
Hans

It's been a while since I worked with flockiing, but could you make the bat flocking system in a new project, save the flocking system, and then import it into your current working project? Are you sure you have particles turned on in your chor when you try to view the flock?

I turned on Particle and hair under the camera and then, again, tried to do new>flocking>birds, then droped my bat model,from the project workspace onto the flocking icon, in the project workspace, but nothing happens, they bat will not even populate once. Is the particle you are talking about under the camera render options. Anyhow, when I try to do a final render, there is no bats in the choregraphy.

Check the setting at Tools/Options on the Render Panel to see if A:M is set to use your camera's settings or the default settings set in the Render Panel itself. If "Use Camera Settings" is selected you'll need to crack open your Camera's Properties and turn on Particles there. Assuming you want to use the Camera's settings of course. If not you can change that to "This dialogue" and A:M will use the default settings found there.

I posted a swarm example with project here

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=31837

I checked the tools>options>render panel and the "draw particles were turned off". So, I turned it on there as well as the camera. The flocking would not work again, so I had to tediously, work on another Choreography to somewhat match what I had originally intended. I have no clue, as to why the flocking stopped working all to gether in this project. I had a few projects somewhat saved and backed up, but they needed about 8 hrs or work to catch up with what I lost. Anyhow, thanks for the info. I do know now not to turn off particles/ Hair. I think this is when things went wrong, when I turned them off. I tried to import the flocking sequence into my project, from another and my software crash over and over again. I was left ( with my limited knowledge) to rebuild half of my project again.

I'm sorry to hear of your problems with Flocking Hans.

This will be little consolation after spending the time reconstructing your project but I offer it here as I don't want you (or anyone else) to have false expectations of turning Hair On/Off. That will lead you to more (and unnecessary) frustration somewhere down the line. A new user reading 'Keep Particles turned on' is going to accept that as gospel and I want to assure you its not.

There is no known instance where turning particles/hair on or off breaks flocking that I know of.
Nothing in A:M reports is listed either. While a new bug may have surfaced... don't see it.
Something else happened or went wrong.
For the record though: Flocking requires Particles to be turned on or it won't work.
Depending on how you are using A:M you may need to set Particles on in several places to properly render.

One thing to do first before troubleshooting too far is to consider closing down A:M and restarting your computer.
When programs remain on for extended periods of time things can go wrong.
Consider for instance updates that have been downloaded and installed but not completely installed.
Often the installation is not fully finished until the computer is restarted.

Flocking has its own set of criteria too that must be met and wherever a step is missed or something is not set appropriately flocking will not appear to work at all. The trick is to determine (hopefully sooner than later) whether what is being experienced is a bug... a missed step... unknown requirement that hasn't been met... or user error. I believe we make a serious mistake when we automatically assume something that is not working is a bug. In some cases the process may not be optimal but where not followed expected outcomes can result.

Just in testing Flocking several times yesterday I had to remind myself of the requirements for successful flocking. Turning Particles on is only one. It was only after seeing they weren't working that I started to remember what they were.

Why type all of this... I don't want you to think you need to keep Particles on all the time.
That would be a very bad thing as Particles eats up a lot of processing power in realtime.

Turn Particles Off when you don't need them.
Turn them on if you do.
Before rebuilding projects post information on it here. Before making big changes save often and incrementally under different file names.

If there is a bug somewhere in the mix we'll help Hash Inc squash that too.

Make sure you have ALL the things exactly done the same way as in the new project where it is working.

First I would try to turn particles off and on again. Now press space (which will refresh the view).
Be sure the Chor-Action (Red bar in the timeline) is as long as it should be. The same for the blue bar which will determine the length of the chor.

Now rightclick in the chor-window and click on "Simulate Spring System".
I am not totally sure, but I think the Flockingsystem has something to do with the Springsystem.
Anyway it will not do any harm.

Have a look on the properties of the flock-system.
Space Subdivision should be at > 0.
Draw As Dots should be off (or you wont see much from your birds but only some dots which are not very visible.)
Off course population has to be over 0 (at your place 30)

It is not easy to guess what could be wrong, because we dont have the projectfile, so these are only some things that could go wrong there.
*Fuchur*

I did not try right clicking in the chor-window to simulate Spring System. Yet I did turn on and off my computer, a few times and press the space bar, but I could not get the flocking system, at that time, even after I deleted the flocking system and bats, then replaced them, to work ever again. Thanks for all the steps and information. This will help me on my next two future projects, if anything goes wrong with the flocking, I will look back at all these steps. I really don't know where the error happend, on my part. I think, I'm finally finished with my animation. I'm rendering all now and then edit it together. Anyhow, my 3 minute animation will be in the opening of a full length, independent, low budget film called. John Johnsons' Skeleton Key 3, The Organ Trail or called Skeleton Key 3, The organ trial. The film will premier this August in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, at the horrorfind. Then the video will go straight to video for sale and to rent. If anyone is interested in the horrorfind or the skeleton key 3, I copied and pasted a link. Thanks for all the forum support.

http://www.darkstone-ent.net/index2.html

I'm not aware of any connection between Flocking and Spring Systems. (Hey... I can learn!)
If you've built into your project something Spring System related however that would require its use.

With Particle based systems one thing you may need to adjust is your 'Preroll' settings.
I've become accustomed to doing that in projects with Hair and Sprite Particles.
If you don't Preroll you may see nothing there.

I'm hoping to get all the way to the Flocking Exercise this year as I work through TaoA:M.
At that time my plan would be to do an exhaustive look at the Feature.
Just in looking at Flocking again recently I've learned new things (Use of Action Objects to add variety for instance).