Attached Link: http://www.markbremmer.com/clients/renderosity

If you go to the link shown above, you'll see a couple of movies demonstrating particles and another link showing how to use the Particle Shader selection in the Shader tree.

Don't feel bad if particles have left you thinking, "I just don't get it". Their use is not really intuitive. Particles usually confuse everybody at first look but once you start getting the hang of them, you'll find yourself thinking, "Wow, do you know what I could do with these..."

I've had lasers slicing through metal, jet exhaust, heat on pavement, schools of fish etc. You can even rotoscope movies onto the individual particles for absolutely outrageous effects. Pretty cool stuff.

Message edited on: 02/17/2005 09:09

Nice animations. I'm sure that sharing this will be a big help to many here!

Aha. That would be me. Thanks for showing where the particle shader is. Okay, I need to experiement with this, because I think I'm missing something; do the colors picked in the particle preview window do ANYTHING?

Hello Nomuse, No, the color in the particle preview mean nothing in the shader room. It's simply a visual to identify their stage of life while in the particle preview. However, they are useful to previsualize colors and glows within the particle preview. Mark

Very cool, particularly the test you did no the missile/rocket. Sound dose go a long way.

This is pretty great stuff. Could you give a fuller explanation on what's happening with the rocket smoke trail and explosion? Also, it's a great help just knowing that the preview window is so completely misleading. This is going to keep me up tonight!!

Hi Kelley,

That animation has four particle systems: 1) the billowing launch cloud, 2) the rocket trail, 3) the explosion fireball, and 4) the flying debris.

The rocket trail uses the free particle option so the particles don't mechanically follow the generator. They have an emission rate that is slightly greater than the speed of the generator so they have very little motion "backwards" once the rocket is up to speed. The particles themselves are the sphere option with quite a little variation +- in size to create irregularity.

For the exhaust/smoke shader,the color channel has a cellular mixer in for the gray and black colors. This same shader was then duplicated into the transparency channel with the gray color exchanged for something near white for partial transparency and greater irregularity of the smoke.

The Fireball shader has the specific key frames over time for the multiple glow changes like the fireworks - I just change what's going on at different points in the timeline.

It does take a little while to set up, but sure is fun!

Message edited on: 02/17/2005 20:55

Mark, Mark, Mark. Once again you put me to shame. Fearlessly going where others haven't even thought. I guess it's time for me to pull out the manual again. I'm gonna ask a question that I think I already know the answer to: These techniques could be used for print work too, couldn't they?

Well of course it can Robert! Quite well in fact. ;)

Mark, Very nice movies,going to have to learn some of this stuff.Thanks for posting this , gives us incentive to learn it. Mike

Thanks Mark, for the additional info. Last night was spent cutting the final ties to Carrara 2.0 [wherein particles wouldn't work worth a damn] and opening Carrara 4.3, where they did...but oddly. I can see that I have A LOT of work ahead of me. And another long night tonight trying to apply what you posted today. The most frustrating part of last night was, if you start to make a small 'boom' and increase the particle generator size during the explosion [on the timeline] the particles look like they've morphed into ping-pong balls. How to get around that?

Also, the hot point does not want to stay at the center of the generator, and the generator jumps around, frequently out of the camera view. I often had to install a keyframe at every frame on the timeline to keep it in place. Is this normal?

Would I be right in supposing that a good satisfying explosion could be set up in one document, dragged to the browser and installed 'X' number of times in another scene?

Hi Kelley, As a rule, I try to avoid changing the size of the actual generator over time. I get much better results by adjusting emit speed area and generation, air resistance and gravity. That way the particles themselves stay the same size. As for the hot point, if you have it locked to the center of the object, as the object gets bigger it will reposition itself. Also explore increasing the emit area using a second generator timed to go off slightly after the first one. This will provide a good second "push" to the explosion. I'm actually using a large emit area to create insects flying over fields right now - just a different use. :) You are correct in thinking you can drag emitters from the browser into other documents - same explosion different documents! Give the time it takes to set some of these up, it's nice to be able to reuse them.