Particle Playground

[Mylenium]

hi everybody.

i've been stuck woth one problem for several hours, tried to look for a solution here and there... i was even looking for some plugins, but it seems that i'm stuck with particle playground... i see it is very powerfull plugin and stuff, but it just sometimes gets over my head.

for the first time i need to create more complex particles than before. here is my problem:

underwather scenery, fishes swimming, bubbles emitting form some seashells.... and this is where the problem starts....

i have a shark swimming throu the scene, and i'd like it to affect the bubble particles. i know how i want this to look, but i'm not even close. i've managed to create a repeller that blows the particles away, but thats not what i'm looking for.

the particles should move slowly to the surface of the wather (that is somewhere off the frame). when the shars swimms throu them (and it swimms from the back of the scene to the front - so torwards the camera) i'd like the particles he colides with to get an "implosion" kind of effect. so they are sucked inside the collision area with a huge force, and then (after reaching the center of the collision) are blown away because of the huge force that sucked them in.

i hope i made myself clear... you get the idea... just try to visualize it an you'll probably know what i mean.

btw. the bubbles need to still try moving up, as they are lighter that the wather...
i know that i can set the repeller force to negative value and i'll get an implosion effect, but then the particles just fly around freely, and i'd like them to stop after a short moment, because of the wather resistance.

any ideas how to achive this one? thanks in advance.

No, don't use collisions. Use ephemeral propertiy maps and affect the position and velocity parameters. It's not going to look ultra-real (fluid dynamics are complex, after all), but should be much better. The trick is to have a second sub-comp that acts as the shark's "force field" and by itself uses another instance of particles to generate an RGB map for the turbulence. The shark in that sub-comp should have some sort of Glow/ Gradient around it so the particles are streaming in a dynamic way and don't bounce abruptly.

Mylenium

[explorer-pl]

i tried that already and came up with nothing thst looks close to what im looking for... i know i wan't be super-ultra-real - but i'm sure it'll do... :)

[explorer-pl]

still no good results. not even close. any more specyfic instructions? im not used to work in particle playground and sometimes it just scares me :)

[dwigfor]

Have you tried the demo to Trapcode Particular? You may like that better than ParPlayground.

[explorer-pl]

yes i have, and particular is great, just like their other plugins, but it lacks the phisical aspect of particle playground... i mean simulations.

particular has Spherical Field and it looked ok for the moment, but then i've noticed that it affects the particles as a modificator, not as a force... in other words, the particles snap to the surface of this virtual sphere.


i just need to create a stream of particles (from a cannon i think) and put an obsticle in the way, so the particles go around it. it cant be that hard... anyone? i've been playing in that playground for a long time and i dont like it anymore... i want my mom...!

[ragecg]

Well, I know it is reverse thinking, but other than using a 3d app, in Trapcode Particular, you can use a light emitter on a custom-keyed path you choose.

I only say that because you said you needed a stream of particles, not a wall or big semi-controlled cloud of particles.

The good news with this is Particular also has a "bounce" feature so any stray particles will collide with your obsticle as they work around it on the path.

Might be worth a try at least:)

Good luck!

[explorer-pl]

belive me... i wouldn't be fighting with particle playground if i havant check all other options :D

come on all you AE gurus... where are you... simple question. emiting particles that will avoid a single object.

[Mylenium]

belive me... i wouldn't be fighting with particle playground if i havant check all other options :D

come on all you AE gurus... where are you... simple question. emiting particles that will avoid a single object.

Well, if you're so obsessed with controlling the particles' flow, then why bother with particles at all? Sounds paradox? No! Check into displacement effects like Mesh Warp, Bezier Warp, Caustics or third-party tools such as Path Distort from Digital Anarchy's Toolbox collection to "bend" your stuff around your shark. You may need to pre-compose and compensate somehow for the stretching, but it's your best bet. You wouldn't do it much differently in a 3D program - instead of simualting it, you'd align your particles to invisible paths, direct them with forcefields or deformers.

Mylenium

[explorer-pl]

ok everybody. thanks for your support. i finally got it working throu particle playground. looks almost the way i like it. just some tweaking left to do, but im very close.

thanks again

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