CGTalk - Vortex along spline

zbavas

08-26-2006, 09:09 AM

Hey guys,

I am trying to create a Tornado effect. I know there are many posts about this but I cant seem to find the solution I'm after. Basically I am wondering if it's possible to get a vortex effect on a particle system the follows an animated spline.. I have particles flowing up the spline with 'speed by Icon'. Is there a way to add a vortex force which follows the contour of the spline?

The closest I got was to constrain a circle to the animated path, then constrain the 'Speed by Icon' to the circle, and making the percente of travel about 8000. This gives me a rotation, but very uniform..

I can then spawn particles from this. I think the vortex effect is much better but I cant seem to get it to follow the spline.

Any suggestions?

BrandonD

08-26-2006, 03:07 PM

There is no gravitational spline space warp to easily facilitate this. I've seen some people script it, but it's not trivial at all. The new Box #3 plugin would make this much easier with it's higher level controls.

In the past, i've used deforming geometry with PositionObject and SpeedBySurface. And before PFlow, just a series of Vortex and Wind space warps.

Ls3D

08-26-2006, 05:02 PM

You could download the demo of RealFlow, it has a spline based vortex emitter that is pretty easy to work with.

Hey Brandon, you back from the war yet?

-Shea

zbavas

08-27-2006, 12:11 AM

Thanks for that guys..
I was looking at a tornado simulation video by Chris Thomas using Orbaz's new Box#3 system Dataflow..

http://www.christopher-thomas.net/streaming/Tornado_System.mov

It looks fantastic.!!
I have downloaded the demo version. I'm also going to try RealFlow.. I didn't realise there was a spline vortex emitter.

Thanks both for your help.. Much appreciated.

BrandonD

08-27-2006, 04:21 AM

Yes, no longer being shot at. Now I just skateboard to work and make pretty pictures or code work.

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