Is it possible to loop through a sprite group in three.js with a tween that ends in a different position for each sprite? - three.js

Question

I'm confused.
I've made a group of 10 sprites and added them to a THREE.Object3D() called fireworkGroup. I have another Object3D called explode. The tween loops through the sprites changing them from their initial position to explode.position.
for ( var i = 0; i < fireworkGroup.children.length; i ++ )
{
explode.position.x =(Math.random() - 0.5)*4;
explode.position.y =4;
explode.position.z =2;
var tweenLaunch = new TWEEN.Tween(fireworkGroup.children[i].position).to(explode.position, 4000).easing( TWEEN.Easing.Quartic.In);
tweenLaunch.start();
}
The tween is moving all the sprites from their start position to the same end position. So I thought this might be because "tweenLaunch" is being overwritten with a different explode.position each time as the tween is rendered so I'm only seeing the last one created in the loop. When I refresh the page they do all move to a different position, consistent with the Math.random().
But then why do all the sprites move to the explode.position? If "tweenLaunch" is being overwritten then why is it not moving only the last sprite?
Is it possible to have a loop with a tween in it that also changes?
Many Thanks.

Answer 1

I've managed to work out what was wrong by reading around the subject on Stackoverflow questions and answers, looking at a great particle example by stemkoski then trial and error.
view-source:http://stemkoski.github.io/Three.js/Particles.html
I used console.log to look at explode.position that I was using as the second position in the tween. It wasn't holding the values I wanted (a different Math.random on each loop).
So I created fireworkAttributes:
fireworkAttributes = { startPosition: [], explodePosition: [], nextPosition: [] };
and then cloned the sprite position in the function that created the sprites using:
fireworkAttributes.explodePosition.push( sprite.position.clone() );
then looped it in it's own function:
for (var i = 0; i < fireworkGroup.children.length; i++)
{
fireworkAttributes.explodePosition[i].x = (Math.random() - 0.5)*4;
fireworkAttributes.explodePosition[i].y = 4;
fireworkAttributes.explodePosition[i].z = 2;
}
then changed the code in the original question to:
for ( var a = 0; a < fireworkGroup.children.length; a ++ )
{
//need to use this new object as tweening to fireworkAttributes.explodePosition[a] does not work
explodeSite.position = fireworkAttributes.explodePosition[a];
var tweenLaunch = new TWEEN.Tween(fireworkGroup.children[a].position).to(explodeSite.position, 4000).easing( TWEEN.Easing.Quartic.In);
tweenLaunch.start();
}
There may be a more elegant way to do this and I will be working to clean up the code where possible but this does work.