I think I’m close in my attempt to simulate the down draft from a helicopter, but I’m not sure how to improve it - or if there is a better way.
I’ve tried various methods of affecting strand particles with wind and other forces in 2.54, encountering much frustration and baffling results. I think the worst is the fact that wind seems to stretch strand particles, and if they go too far, they don’t curve - they crinkle up on sharp angles.
In this test short, I’m using a crescent shaped emitter that sends particles having a wind force through the strands that are supposed to be grass. I think the “spasm” at the beginning is due to the particle density. I also plan to speed up those emitted parts and I think doing them in waves instead of a “spray” may help.
Does anyone have another, a better or more informed idea on how to accomplish this?
Thanks in advance.
Looks quite good, I find that weird “spasm” at the start often has to do with the large values you use to get force working from it’s initial state of 0. Perhaps ramp the influence up a bit at that point instead of introducing it fully on?
BTW good on you for actually making down draft, I just went out on a windy day and shot plates. Didnt look very good as the wind came from everywhere.
Thanks.
I’ve had been tinkering with for a few days now and found I got a much better result using the “Force” instead of wind. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Iagt0uUh7Q
I find that the wind type stretches and kinks the strands, while the plain force field pushes and bends.
It was basically the same set up. Just had to really fiddle with the strengths and fall offs.
Although in the final sequence, the particles ended up moving a bit too fast and fading too quickly, but I’ll live with the result. You can only render for 10 hrs so many times just to see what the real result will be before just accepting it!
Obviously I’m still learning to do all of this, but no matter what resolution, quality or number of layers I tried to render, it wanted to calculate the entire scene and just display the requested segments. I didn’t see a big time difference in do it that way. Not to mention it looks different when the rest of the image isn’t there.
When I thought to include this effect, I already had all the other elements of the scene done up. I’m slowly getting better at UV wrapping, but I think some of the textures I used were too large. So between that, 40K+ strands, 400 frames of smoke, a slower dual core machine and a Windows 7 environment that crashes and hangs whenever it feels like it, It just seems to take a while.
The main problem was a realistic speed of the particles compared to the passing helicopter. When you preview the animation in the 3D window, the fastest it would run is about 5 frames per second, so it’s hard to get a real idea of the speed of the end result.
This is learning project, so I can comfortably move on and (aim to) do better in the next scene.