Particle Flow Discussion

#921

Spawn trails or motion blur can accomplish that…
(the stringy ropes thing that is)

#922

DarkVIP: you can try here http://www.particlefx.com/education/PFlow/index.html

The shapemark tutorial may give you some idea.

#923

RazzBlade…how so?..do you have any setup of that…(stringy rope thing)

#924

Hi Castelle,

Sorry bout the delay in reply,

anyways, heres a short vid, (super spray, and motion blur)… its not PF but the same thing can be done easily with PF, its also rather easy to change the number of strings, length, thinckness, opacity, etc. It’s a similar effect and with some tender love and care (time and tweaking) which I didnt have, lol. you could accomplish something like the video you posted.

http://www.blademultimedia.com/webposts/stringdemo.avi (306kb DivX 5.11)

Heres the max file if you want to look at it. Thers not to much of interest other than partical system (a super spray, thats been contrained to path) and the MB controls in the render dialog. (Its a rather unimpressive set up =)
http://www.blademultimedia.com/webposts/Stringy.max (152kb)

Best regards
Razz

#925

I would like to create volumetric object with particles. It is no problem : Box with 3d noise as emiter. Particles generated inside. But when I animate this 3d texture particles did not folow animation /they are created on first frame/. So it looks like I woud need script. Something what automaticly update born operator on every frame an recreate volume. May be there is no practical use of such a script. I can not write scripts but If someone has done something like this please poste it / or some links /.
I would also like to know if there exist something as volumetric gradient. Becouse when I create particles inside object by volume’s grayscale map, PFlow ignore all 2D maps. And Gradient map is 2D map / Or am I doing something wrong? /. Or does it exist woxel map. Map with 3 grayscale /or color/ inputs: XYZ. And on, and on…

                                           THanx

And U are all doing a great thing with all that help and sharing.

#926

hey guys

I was just doing a little flow useing the “Split Ammount” test and something caught my attention… the split amount percentage value. I set my value to 15%

How does PFlow know how much 15% is if it hasn’t been through the flow yet? Seeing as a percentage is a fractional value of the total ammount, it hasn’t been to the end of the flow, so doesn’t know how much the total ammount is…

Is it just making an educated guess on what has happened so far and whats to come? or does it actually know whats coming up?

#927

No, it doesn’t know what’s coming up.

I think it works pretty much in the same way as you see it in the PFlow schematics. The particles get passed on to the Split Amount test, then they get divided by one of methods you selected.

So it only knows what it gets and then sorts the particles. A percentage of 20 means that it’ll send 2 out of 10 particles to the next event, with 8 remaining in the current event. If you have 15% you have either 1 or 2 particles out of 10 testing true, I think this is where the Unique Seed comes into play.

Hope this helps.

  • Rens
#928

I have that .max file if you would like to look at it. There are two different pflow events in the scene. One for the gun/bullets and one for the text that is split up/fragmented on impact with the bullets. There is a birth script on the event for the fragment. Anyway, if you would like the file give me an email address or contact me on aim.

#929

just a quick note, if you turn on the tools to see how it thinks, it’ll basically work out the particle count for that event at the time it samples it, and then break off the percentage into a new event from there, and keep in midn that it relies on a sequential order, so if you want the spawn particles to also be counted, best to put a split amount below any spawn tests etc.

-AM

#930

Here is a quick test about the animated splines we can see in the video http://www.jamaicafarewell.com/download/cgtalk/ultrahd.mov

I m not sure this was done with particles but, however, PF can tweak the job :slight_smile:
The test is not a replica, I had noised wind for a post motion and the loop shapes are completly different… mmm… in fact this is really completly different but, on the same bases.

http://forumel.free.fr/PF/lineFlow-01.mov

#931

Loran: what happen to the .max file that i asked you about the other day?

#932

After examining the video I’m going to say that the lines in the video were done in post probably using 3D Stroke or Particular from Trapcode (AfterEffects plugins). The reason I say this is that the splines are not reflected in the floor but the finished models are. I could be wrong just stating what I noticed. Now onto your attempt. That is very nice. If you could get some fall off with that I could see it working for some things like cigarette smoke and the like.

#933

Loran can you post the max file for this??? if not just say so.
I really want to see how this is done…or if anyone else has a similar max file…please! post away…

#934

can someone explain to me what null particles are, I am doing a tutorial and don’t understand what they are used for. I get the feeling they are invisible particles used to trigger off test/events etc.

#935

no problem,

I worked it out, thats what the are. Particles that sit on the emitter and trigger test and stuff, cool.

#936

Hello there I am new to CGTalk… not new to Max, just this Forum…
(Wish I had found this place a long time ago…)

Anyway, I am working in PFlow on a scene and I am having trouble with this setup.

I have an object emitter that basically mimics Alan’s Pflow Attract setup, moving from the emitter through spacewarps to my end Target.

Here is the thing… I want these particles (6850 of them) to attach to the target at selected vertices… I have a mesh Select modifier on the target with the verts selected… I tried wiring in a Position Object and that made them pop into place on the target… not what I want. I can use the ease setting on the target to get them to stop… but not on the selected verts?

I assume I need to use a script vector to tell PFlow where to put the particles on the surface? But I am not a script literate person… I am trying to learn as much as I can but language is not my strong point…

any ideas or thoughts would be appreciated…

Thanks

Jim

#937

Hi Jim
Would a reverse setup work for you? Using your former target as emitter with a position object operator set to Selected Vertices and the former source as new target. You could then reverse the order of your rendered images for animation.

hope that helps
Boa

#938

Yeah, I thought of that… but there is a pretty elaborate camera move on the animation… it goes on a path with the particles… the camera is inside the target object when the particles reach it and attach in rows around the camera… to reverse this with all the other animation elements in the scene would be a challenge in itself?

I can try it… but it may not be possible… I also thought about deleting the faces of the target object to make the particles stick the parts of the surface I want… this almost works… but the particles do not place themselves on the surface in any particular way… and I need each one of them to land on a seperate vert to complete the shape in points.

My goal here is an animated shape made up of individual particles that assemble, hold+animate, then colapse. The tests I am running are as simple as 200 sphere shapes coming in attaching to a box with 400 verts on the bottom and sides leaving the top open then collapse to nothing.

Since I am dealing with so many particles I have managed a fake for the animatic I am working on… I setup the particles to flow to the target and I used lighting and materials to cover a second particle animation that has the position object with selected vertices in place with a material transition setup using small deflectors to trigger the building of the shape using scale… as the deflectors animate around the surface the collisions cause the shape to be born by scaling the particles… this worked out great for now. But it looks like a cheat. I would still love to figure out how to tell the target to attach each particle to the selected vertices in the Mesh Select modifier in the stack.

#939

good news… few more days 'til the DVD’s out. get the master tomorrow to approve, so if all’s good it’ll be out very soon :slight_smile: (Friggin finally heh heh)

#940

he that’s just to awesome news Allan
looking really forward to it