How do i speed stretch particles with Pflow.

#1

Hey Guys,

Question… I’m opening a beer bottle in my animation. The fluid spray that comes out are now spheres. How can i get them to speed stretch.

I also wanted to figure out how to get the particles to align with the direction they are traveling. Maybe that way i can use the scale function to stretch them. So far, i haven’t been able to figure it out.

I think it has to do with the rotation operator and setting it in the speed space follow mode. But the particles still face all in the same direction.

Any ideas.

Probably something silly.

Thanks

Dennis

#2

If you are only using PFlow, I would suggest a combination of “Spawn by travel” and an animated “Scale operator”.

See also my attached file (Max9). Offcourse it needs tweaking for your purpose.

Edit: attachment updated…

#3

euh… spawn by travel??? Where do i find that. Forgot to mention that i’m using 3dsmax9.

And u have plugins installed that i don’t use. Also, i can’t find Pflow in your scene.

#4

it’s the spawn test, and use the By Travel Distance option

#5

  • Didn’t use any plugins, so shouldn’t matter

  • I ment the “Spawn” -test (Yellow icon called Spawn in your depot, inside PFlow) set to “travel”

  • The only thing (besides an Gravity spacewarp) I have in the scene is the PFlow icon. Select it and click on “Particle View”. Or try hitting the 6-key. Or choose “Graph editor” -> “Particle View”

#6

i’ll look into that.

But seriously. There is no particle flow icon/emitter in the scene. It’s not hidden. Not on a layer. It isn’t in the selection box.

And if i press “5”… still no PFlow. sry.

#7

Ok… i use spawn bij travel to spawn a duplicate of the main particle. That particle can be set to align to travel direction?

What i’m getting is that is spawns a lot more particles. hmmm… And still can’t let it follow it’s direction.

Wicked. Do you have another scene for me?

#8

Try number 6 :wink:

What happens when you move the time-slider? Particles should emit from an emitter…
This emitter, or “Particle Flow source” if you will, is called… “PF Source 01”

Edit: No, not right now. I’m working right now and it’s my birthday today :beer:. But if you could post your scene maybe someone else wants to look at it?

#9

No particles are spawning. There is no emitter.

There is a Wind01, a Box01 (with a line moving over it via materials), an FFX Object Src01, a FumeFX01 and a spot light.

Have u sent me the wrong file? Try out the file out of the zip you’ve sent me.

EDIT: Happy birthday mate… hope you got nice presents. My file is a little on the huge size. 49 MB

#10 
Yes.. Must have selected the wrong file in all my hurry.. I updated the attachment.
Sorry mate, these kind of things happen when someone gets older ;)

 EDIT: Happy birthday mate... hope you got nice presents. My file is a little on the huge size. 49 MB

Thx. :)
#11

ooops… how old did you get.?

what u have in your scene is not what i’m searching for. I don’t need to spawn more particles. The main particles are enough. And they need to be faced in the direction of travel.

I made a small test file to upload. And guess what… I works right away. Using speed space follow. i can align the particles in the direction they are traveling.

Which is strange because that was the first thing i tried in my big scene. There it doesn’t work. All particles gets faced in the same direction. not their own direction of travel.

Thanks though.

Gonna look into it.

Thanks again.

Dennis

#12

Only 28… :surprised

what u have in your scene is not what i’m searching for. I don’t need to spawn more particles. The main particles are enough. And they need to be faced in the direction of travel.

Ok, no problem. I just thought this is how I would do it. But it al depends what you are looking specifically for I guess.

Oh, suddenly I remembered something… There is an “stretch” option when you use “SuperSpray”… :smiley:

#13

very simple… add a scale operator, scale the x up a bit (say 200). add a rotation operator and set orientation matrix to “Speed Space Follow”. Done!

#14

That works great for just animating the scale by hand, but what if you wanted to control the scale/stretch by the speed of the particle? (Using PFlow) Would you have to do some scripting for that?

(It’s been a long time since I’ve touched particle flow. But I need to start looking into it again…)

#15

Well, its stupidly easy with Box 3. Took me about 2 min to set up, just plug the speed magnitude into the scaleZ output then align the rotation to speed space follow.
I just had a look at doing it with a script operator and I couldnt get anything working (I havent really used pflow scripting, I just went straight to Box3!!) But logically you should be able to say something like i.particleScaleXYZ = [1,1,particlespeed] but you probably have to get the cross product of the speed vector to get a speed magnitued. My vector maths aint great.

#16

Try bobo’s script for setting lengh by speed:

http://www.scriptspot.com/bobo/mxs5/pflow/pflow__particle_Lenght_by_velocity.htm

#17

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