Keep nparticles inside volume

#1

Hello, everyone!

I’m following this tutorial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTGI8FioGhQ

In order to simulate particles from a mesh. How could I keep those particles inside a volume? Cause the one in the video is not like a “bowl” where the particles would be simulated, but more of something that hits and disturbs the particles.

I tried the Autodesk Maya Tutorial here

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/maya/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2016/ENU/Maya/files/GUID-2A185B9F-02D6-4786-B58A-D7B8B1021DE4-htm.html

Even with a different type of field, one that would have the whole mesh included in its volume. But I think I have executed badly the last step because I couldn’t quite understand it. “Parent the radial field to the first field, and reset the radial field’s transform to be the identity.This makes the radial field have the same volume as the original field”. By resetting the radial field’s transform to be the identity I only tried to tick and tick off the “Inherits transform” in its channel box.

My main wish right now is to keep those particles inside a volume. Maybe create a tornado afterwards that would just suck them out of the frame. Or just simply stick them to my ground plane in a more controlled fashion.

#2

Hi

“Parent the radial field to the first field, and reset the radial field’s transform to be the identity.”

Both fields should match in position and size after parenting. For the second radial field you may just zero out translation and rotation attributes in the channel box and set 1 for all scale attributes. With the “volume exclusion” checkbox enabled in a radial field, it inverts the area of influence. This way the first radial field would push the particles away while the second one pushes them back (with the negative magnitude) outside of the first one.

If your desired shape is not like a simple volume shape but more complex geometry you may wish to model a collision geometry and make it a passive collider for the particles. In this case you would see them bounce back hard and not return as smooth as with a force field.

An alternative would be to use goals for the particles. This way the particles can stick to your surface, swirl around due to forces and return back to your surface in the end.

I hope this helps.
cheers