Can particle swarm to a given shape

#1

Is there any way to make particles swarm to a given shape? I’m trying to make an animation for a card company and I want loads of little cards to swarm to the shape of a single card. (It’s from a camera perspective though so using a rectangular emitter is not good enough). Is there a way you can, for example, use a greyscale image to represent particle attraction (i.e. white pixel: attracts strongly, black pixel: no attraction)?

I hope this makes sense, thanks.

#2

yep you sure can,

check this out, i did this recently just playing around
here

i just had the particles find the target which was letters that were unrenderable, then once they found the target, i had them stop.

-B

#3

Wow! That is exactly what I need to do. How’s it done?

Thanks!

#4

here is the exact pflow schematic.
the lock bond operator at the bottom is from PFlow tools you can download the freebie stuff on the orbaz site site and that should do the same thing.

hope this helps ya

#5

I saw a tutorial a while back on how to have smoke swarm into text inside of combustion. I can’t find the link or remember how it was done, my advice would be though to work backwards. Start with an emitter in the same of your card in 3d space, and then have it spray a single set of particles out, and reverse the footage.

Although I do agree with the previous poster, if you have 3d Max, your life would be a million times easier

#6

Thank you for youe help, I will try it tonight. :slight_smile:

#7

No, Combustion Particles can’t swarm to a shape. However, you can create line emitters in the shape you want them to end up and have them emit from there. Then render the footage and reverse it. Which is how the Smoke to text tutorial that was mentioned is done, which can be found here.

-Eric

#8

How did that one guy make the particles come off the sphere in such a cool fashion =-o

I tried using wind forces and stuff like that but I couldn’t get it to look nearly as cool as http://www.brandonyoungdesign.com/downloads/fire_smokefx/dust%20letters.mov

So can anyone tell me how it was done, or better yet can the creator send me the max file (i’m on version 6)

Seems like it has to be wind…

#9

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.