Particle Animation - Too fast for field interaction?
 

Hello!

mtmckinley's Tuorial for creating Water by using Blobby Particles inspired me a hell much, Thanx for that!!http://www.mtmckinley.net/frames.html

Now I found out that I could animate my Stargate outburst and the Surface with the Blobby Sorface Particles. The problem I encountered while trying to animate the outburst was that the particles were too fast to be affected by the radial-field!
I used a volume particle emmiter (tube) and volume radial-fields to get the desired shape of the particles as they burst out, but some portions of the outcoming particles ust fly through the volume-field unaffected?!

What can I do?

Thanx for any help!!:beer:

Markuz

..Oh, and I can't make the animation slower as the whole process has to happen within 6-10 frames.
It worked just fine when the along axes value of the volume emitter was about 10 or so, but after I turned it up to 200 it looked similar to the image I posted above... :mad:

I know the effect you're going for (big stargate fan) and it's a toughie. The movie and tv show actually use actual water video as the main source of their effect (with particles thrown in for effect). Only thing I know to tell you is to keep experiementing. You could perhaps create a cylinder and have the particles collide with it, but make it completely transparant so it won't render.

You could also set your particles to die as they hit/exit the volume shape.

Hello!

Thanks for your advices. I think I've got it now. I used several volume radial fields, 1 with a positive Magnitude at the begining, and to with a negative differnetly strong magnitude after that. Additionally I've added a Newton field behind the Outburst to pull the particles back and let them fall a bit about a quarter way...

I am quite happy with the animation, although the renderings don't look too well..

I used blobby surfaces, but it takes soooooooo unbelievable long to render the scene when I use as much particles to crate the desired effect (about 10.000 per second) of a single blobby surface :confused:

Also the Surface of the Wormhole isn't quite satisfying. I also used a volume cone emitter and blobby surface particles, but I don't know how to make a THIN surface with them? When I turn down the radius of the particles, the surface gets holes, but when I turn up the radius the whole surface gets thick...
Also I don't want THAT much individual particles as the surface shall look.. well... when you know the series you know what I mean:) The surface isn't rough... So the Radius shall be great..

I tried to scale just along the z-axes, but then again, the surface gets holes...

mhh.. I guess I won't get a nice result with reasonable render times, those particles eat performance for breakfast ;)

Markuz

Maybe you could render out a playblast of what you are talking about?

so to see anything that we might be able to help you out with a bit more:)

Hi!

Sure, I'll do that along with the Stargate Playblast today..
Every help or advice/comment is appreciated :)

Regards

Markuz

Hi!

So here's the basic outburst-animation : http://markussel.tripod.com/WormholeParticles.avi

I turned the outburst particle radius down for the playblast so you can see their individual movement better...

I'm still not happy with the rendering times and the result and haven't found a reasonable balance between them :(..

Regards

Markuz

Ok, nice animation by the way:)

So, correct me if I am wrong, but your 2 current questions are realy regarding possibly DEcreasing the physical radius of the "surface" particles, and then getting your animation a little bit better?

Did I understand you correctly?

Well, quite :p

I want the surface of the wormhole to look like one single continous surface without holes and too a too significant striking structure that would look "rough".. Well, It's supposed to look like a water surface or like the effect I created with my last nurbs-surface I used (see finished work section for my finished Stargate stills), but should still be able to "build up" like you see it in the TV-series. The surface starts to build up from the centre until the whole circle is closed with one surface...

The outblast should look like water being pushed down from a turbine or jet-engine when you look at it from underneath the water-surface (that's how the original effect was created I think)..

All that should happen with as few particles as possible so that I could get a reasonable render-time on my quite slow machine

Any help / proposal is highly appreciated!

Best Regards

Markuz

Hi!

Here's an image of what I've got now: http://forums.simplymaya.com/showthr...5565#post75565
I've left the blobby wormhole surface away as it's just too thick...

What do you think of it? Doesn't look too similar to the TV-show effect, doesn't it?

Regards

Markuz

You know, I was thinking, and maybe Mike can chime in on this one, but have you thought about using blend-shapes?

It would be time consuming, but if you are going for realism, this might give you an easier shot?

Ok,
You could create a nurbs curve along the side profile of the "effect" that defines the shape in its' "outer-most" sploosh position, then make that shape your base shape.

Then, you could use Mayas modifiers, vertice tweaks, etc, to squish the shape back down to look closer to the "calmer" surface using the same geometry, and make that another blend.

Then, using that blend shape animation, add a wave or sine deformer to give the needed rough and calm ripples as it animates.

Then, shade your water geometry with an ocean shader, or whatever you got for water, and animate it to look like it is rippling, and moving as the blend happens:)

Then, make your surface an emitter, and rock on with some blobbies, point-type wisps, etc. coming off of the surface to add depth and more realism.

NOW, the hard part:

*Connect a SDK to the value of one blend to the value of the emitter, AND the magnitude/position values of any fields you might have etc.
NOTE, remember that you CAN use your water surface as a SOURCE of a field, so use that to your advantage!


GOOD LUCK!!!

Wow! Now THAT was a post :D...

Honestly, I didn't understand everythink you tried to tell me but I will try to find out what you meant, that's sure!
I haven't used (well, at last not intentionally?) blend-shapes at all, so I'll read the maya documentary for that purpose.

But anyway, I'll be on holiday in 2 days, and I don't think I'll be able to do all that untill then, so first of all I'll render the scene without the special effect of the wormhole outburst I think... At least in case I shouldn't be able to get the paint-effects be ivisibly behind the particles ...

BIG Thanks anyway, I'll try work with your thoughts when I am back from holiday, though! :beer:

Regards

Markuz

Yep, that's a method I would attempt.

Cool:)

and Thanks Mike!