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Animation Techniques > 3dsmax Pflow For A Water Wall - Part 2 (Posted By: Neoscape)
:: Post Date: 2008-04-10 09:52:20 [Post Comment] [Post Articles]

3dsmax Pflow For A Water Wall - Part 2

Software: 3dsmax
Author: Neoscape
Website: http://www.neoscape.com/

Tutorial by Neoscape Artist: Nils Norgren

This tutorial follows my first piece with pflow for a water wall. Read through this tutorial for a more in-depth look.

Create a new Psource, 5 x 5 at 0,0,0. Create: Particle Systems: PF Source. Set the animation time to Film (personal preference) and set the animation time to “480” (making the entire range of 20 seconds). Now select the particle object and click the button to open Particle View. Set the birth to “-100,” death to “480” in the Birth action in Event 01. Also within the Birth action toggle on rate (from amount).

Rotate the particles to point up and add a gravity. Create: Space Warp: Forces: Gravity. Add a force action to particles, then add link to the gravity and make influence “300.” Add box to get a temporary cue for height; make it 15' tall. Select the Speed action and change the speed of particles to get the height right. Set the particle variation to give it some randomness.

With the Speed action still selected, set divergence to make it wider. Within the create palette, add a deflector. Create: space warp: deflectors: deflector. Move deflector slightly down in the Z axis to be sure that it is below the PF source object. Add a collision action and add the deflector to the action. Select the deflector object and lower the bounce amount.

At the top of the particle flow, add a death action. Then change it to "by age." Play with death to be sure that particles are landing and bouncing before dying. Select the PF source object and animate the rotation to give it some motion. Keep things simple at first. You can come back and make things more intricate once the whole system is set up.

Now that the source is animated and particles are moving more in the X and Y, make sure that the deflector is large enough to catch all particles. Within the particle flow, select the display action and switch particles to geometry. Change the size of the geometry under the shape action. Within the main PF source event (top of the flow), set the viewport amount of particles to “100%. “ Set rate within the birth action to a number that looks good in the viewport.

Back in the PF source, set viewport preview rate back to “10%.” Open up a Curve Editor, under PF Source:Object: Birth: Rate. Set keyframes to make the emitter stop and start. Just like the rotation, make this simple. You can always come back and choreograph this later when the system is whole.

Back in the PF Source set the viewport to 100 percent of particles. At the top level, add a cache node. Make (and name) a mesher object. Create: Compound objects: Mesher. In the modifier panel, select the particles as the source object. Make 10 copies (not instances) of the mesher object.

Here, we write a short bit of maxscript to help offset the animation for each object. First select the mesher objects in order of which object you want to animate, from first to last. Set "offsetAmount" to stagger the animation for each object. Run the script which will offset the start time of each mesher object.

________________________
offsetAmount = 1
for i in 1 to selection.count do
(
selection(i).time = (i * offsetAmount)
)
______________________

Play animation, tweak various animated parts and offset to taste.

All Parts of this tutorial:

3dsmax Pflow For A Water Wall - Part 1

3dsmax Pflow For A Water Wall - Part 2

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