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mattswilson
04-30-2006, 03:37 AM
hey everyone,

Whats the best way to get particles, when you tell them, to form into the shape of a poly object, without actually getting stuck to the surface, like they do with goals. I almost want the particles to flock to the enitre volume of my goal object, not just the surface though. Like sand or something else floating out in space, and then at the given time, swirling in to fill in the volume of the object. It would be the best if they could still move though once they are inside the goal volume. any suggestions? I have seen it a million times in movies, im just not sure at all how to do it within Maya.
rokandic
04-30-2006, 09:17 AM
One way to do it is to have two particle objects with the same number of particles. The goal one would form the object and wouldn't change. The other one you use for actual rendering and just set goal to 1 whenever you want to form the shape.
To fill the volume with goal particles you can just use surface emitter with negative normal speed and collision and low conserve.

Hope this helps,
rok
mattswilson
04-30-2006, 04:12 PM
Hey Rok,

Thanks for the idea, i will try it and see how it works!
Sanctuary
05-01-2006, 01:50 PM
To fill the volume with goal particles you can just use surface emitter with negative normal speed and collision and low conserve.

good ideea, but what if the volume is deforming ? if it`s let`s say an animated character
rokandic
05-01-2006, 05:09 PM
good ideea, but what if the volume is deforming ? if it`s let`s say an animated character
If you don't need something like 100000 particles I suggest that you build the particles mentioned above and then (via mel) create a new mesh with vertices at particle positions and use that as a goal. Also don't forget to bind those vertices to the skeleton ( I suggest to copy weights from actual character model by writing a mel that will copy closest point weight). If you can't easily bind the mesh just use wrap deformer, if it's not to heavy...

-rok
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