Thinking Particles

#121

Two ways - either you create a boolean node, animate that and wire its output to the ‘on’ of the birth node, or you create a float node, animate that and wire it to the rate of the birth node.

#122

se Two ways - either you create a boolean node, animate that and wire its output to the ‘on’ of the birth node, or you create a float node, animate that and wire it to the rate of the birth node.

thanks for the reply
i came up with another technique but i think it would be a victim of the subframe sampling… here’s the idea… create a counter operator and make it count from -30 to 30 (and set it to loop from start) then connect its count output to the the threshold condition where you check if the value is between -30 and 0 and pass the output of the threshold condition to the position born operator (but i think the counter is affected by the viewport/render subsampling)

as for the animation of the float node… i cant make it animate forever :frowning: or is there a wave to assign a controller to it (square wave)?

thanks

#123

Of course you can - the animation of the float node is a standard max controller, and you can assign to it the out of range types so it repeats as you want it :slight_smile:

#124

thanks for the post

Of course you can - the animation of the float node is a standard max controller, and you can assign to it the out of range types so it repeats as you want it :slight_smile:

i could not find any mention in the documentation so i assumed tp nodes are invisible from the curve editor … :blush: my bad!

thanks!

#125

[quote="HeadSmell
What I would Ideally like to set up is a way for my particle to proceed along a path following a dummy and have control over how far away they are from the path, So I can taper them over their life.

   [img"]

http://dznd.net/Webpics/TPEvenWidth.jpg[/img]
[/quote]

Was cleaning up some old files, an stumble upon some old problem scenes and wanted to go round two :wip:

If anyone needs something similar here is what I found as workable solution (Joe Scarrs Tornado Tut did the trick ;) )

I dropped the follow node thing and use a path position node. Drove the the position input(path position node) with the normalized life/age of the group, so over the life they go from one end of the spline to the other. As for the distance i used a orbit node, the path position node feeds he new position into the orbit and then i feed the normalized life/age again into the distance input of the orbit node. you can add additional random nodes to break up the stream or Patach (set to relative) and attach additional particle with wind turbulence. 

hope helps someone... :scream:

[img]http://www.dznd.net/TP/stream.jpg[/img]
#126

Nice setup!

#127

Hi!

I’ve just recorded and put together a tutorial about aligning particles with help of guide objects, which gives u quite a controll of what direction particles are pointing. I’ve explained whole setup, so even beginners should get the idea of how it works.

Direct link to the tutorial is here:
Aligner tutorial - QuickTime h.264 80MB 35min

Scene file, scripted operators and example videos are here:
http://www.tas3d.com/blog/?p=230

Enjoy!

Tas

#128

Wow…That’s Freaking awesome :buttrock:
Thanks for sharing!

So for your example scene with the waves,are you just animating the aligners group along with a ground plane?

Really cool set up :applause:

#129

Not really. Aligned particles follow deformed surface, and another particles are born on top of each properly aligned particle and refrenced to it. Then particles are being offseted along it’s parent Z axis, and at the same time rotated along it’s own local X axis. So I can controll this offset and rotation with curves like this. So it literally gives u a cross-section of new “particle surface”.

#130

Cool stuff man, have to play around with it this weekend :smiley:

When we seeing the tank animation?

#131

Soooooon! I’ve finished compositing like a month ago, but unfortunatelly the soundrigger went for a two week holidays :frowning:
Sfx is almost ready, so expect it within few days.

#132

Hi, all

I looking to simply make increase particles, with relation to the distance of an object, more clearly, I have particles which go of a point A towards a point B by way of X, I shall wish to make them grow at the approach of X may decrease them when they go away from it, without change particles group.

Thanks for your answers.

#133

You can use the distance condition - it gives you a distance value, that you can normalize or multiply and drive the particle size with.

#134

Any news on DVD 2 for TP4 yet?
Also, Machine3D should release a TP DVD soon, anyone know anything about that?

#135

http://sites.google.com/site/m3dgptpprojects/home
Joe has already put some cool script ops up

#136

Thanks mate

#137

Thanks “Glacierise”, for your help

#138

Anybody messed with Phoenix yet?
I’ve been playing with the demo and it doesn’t seem to work with TP.

#139

No TP support :hmm: . Though I’m sure it’s on the list.
To be honest TP and fume integration is pretty stellar

#140

Oh well, have to wait and see. :shrug: