Tornado
 

Hey guys,

I'm just starting a little excercise to make a tornado/twister and thought I would post up the work in progerss as I go about creating the rig and effect.

I'm going to use particles for this with some expressions to control everything.

Just made the main funnel for the tornado, added a blend shape to control the funnel and a latice to defoem the shape.

Added particles onto the surface and started on the rotation.

Cool, looking forward to seeing some particles flying around.

Does look like a good start.............dave

Great start Steve, this shall be fun to watch :)

Cheers Guys,

I've made it so the funnel spins slower at the edges and faster in the centre now, hopefully you can see it in the gif.

good work so far but i think this can be done in after effects with the trapcode particular effect with less rendering time and more control or im i assuming too much :confused:

is that particles emitting from the surface?

That looks good mate!!! wow cant wait for more. I assume its forming and about to touch down...then of course wreaking havoc???

I dig it man....more to learn for this little black duck.

cheers bullet

I really really doubt that you can get more control in after effects with a 3D effect than you can in Maya with its partricles and expressions, which is what I'm using. Could you do little things like make the particles at the center spinn faster thant the outside?

Also I might link the particles to fluids for the final look and I doubt that the level of control in trapcode would let you do something like that.

As its full3D I can then also use it for whatever I need. I might get some footate, track it, load it in with some demolition objets then comp it using Toxic to give it that a go, all of which I probably would strugle with in AE.

Granted rendering time would be less but I know that I can get it looking good in Maya.


Hi Chirone,

Yes they are emmitted onto the funnels surface before any movement and then set as an intital state.

yup it would be a simple matter of duplicating the effect changing the velocity speed also abit of playing around with the turbulance and air resistance options but hey there is more than one way to skin a cat :)

yup your right, I could have simply used particles and a volume curve field, or fluids and used a vol curve, or a vortex, or even got some stock footage and comped it, but thats not the point.

I also dont have trapcode which pretty much rules it out completly.

Thing is I'm not using any dynamics, its all scripted to have ubercontrol over everything, so no silly particles escaping and not doing what I want.

Ive added some ground particles to the mix.

Are you doing this as a one off gster???

If your are doing a scene are you going for realism or fun??

cheers bullet

I'm putting some demo stuff together but I think once its all down I will incorporate it into some footage, I'll haveto go get some first then track it.

Its more of an excrecise in setting up the rig. Once its done I can import it into anything and adjust the animation timings, deformers etc to fit the scene.