Footprint dust effect
 

Hi all,

I am just new to this forum. I wanna create a footprint on the sand with the dust effect swirling due to impact. I create a NURBS surface, convert to polygon using tesselation n make soft body (this is to create more particles on the vertices), then make the foot (NURBS too) collide with it. With this, I can create the deformation due to impact. Then use the "intersect" cmd in Mayascript to find the intersection curve n then emit the particle from it. Adding some fields (gravity, turbulent, votex ... ) but still cannot get the good effect. In addition, got a prob that the particle penetrate from inside the foot or surface, which is undesired.

Anyone got any idea to get the dust effect n how to improve my model?

Thanks

I've found that parenting "Air" fields to your "pushing" geometry will give a good feel to forcibly pushing and disturbing sand/dust, etc.

I tried that method before. I parented a wake air field to the foot. But somehow I couldn't get wat I want. The air field only deformed the surface in a circle shape, not the complex foot shape as desire. I am not sure if I got it wrong anywhere. If possible, ragecgi, can u upload ur sample here, in case urs works. Pls upload Maya 4.0.

I only have Maya 4.5 here at work, but I should be able to convert it to a Maya 4.0 .ma file that you would need to IMPORT:)

The drawback is I cannot do it untill after 5pm my time, (in about 8 hours or so) because my boss watches us like a hawk, so I gotta do it after he leaves:)

But I WILL get it to ya!

Now that I think about it, I just followed the example "robot-wake" example in the docs, and did not set it up like you have it in order to get it to work....

So what might work for you, is to still parent about 4 or 5 wake fields around your "foot" geometry, AND ALSO some turbulence fields to break up the "dust' a bit.

That way, things won't look so evenly "pushed".

..That is what I'm going to try....

Thanks ragecgi

Meanwhile, I'll play around more with the my approach.

I think I may have mis-read your post.
Are you using the parented fields to ALSO effect the softbody ground?

If so, don't:)

Just use the parented fields to effect the sand particles, and use separate fields, or even Blend Shapes to effect the ground:)

You can use my file (attached) as a reference, and if you notice, I DID NOT do the ground deformation, but the particle effect should be doable with a little more tweaking:)

I've included the movie in the zip as well:)

To see this, you need DIVX 5.0.3 or later:

Whoops, that's just the movie, here is the .ma file that you need to IMPORT into Maya.
BTW, you MUST tell Maya that it is a Maya .ma file in the inport dialog box for this to work.

I tested it here, but I only have 4.5, but I edited the file to (hopefully) import into 4.0:)

Ragecgi,

Pity that I can't open ur file. Thought some of the functions are not supported in Maya 4.0 :((

Btw, from your clip, I can get your idea. However, urs was my 1st approach. That's putting the sand on the surface and use wake air to blow them up. However, if the surface is very large, num of sand particles then grow enormously. Hence we have to compromise in the speed :((. Oso, I dun get how u can get the surface deformation then.

Hence I choose to make the surface just softbody with limited particles, then for the dust, I use curve emitter (the curve is computed fromt he intersection btw the surface n geometry). Btw, still some bug. I include here my file (Maya 4.0), hope u can open n give me some advices.

Ooops, the attachment :">