Make particles gather at one point?

Hello guys!

I want to achieve the effect where emmitted particles are following a certain curve and then come to certain point and die there. I’ve tried this and that, but didn’t achieve the whole effect so far :slight_smile:

I just discovered that I can make particles to follow a curve by adding a bezier curve and activating CurveGuide field on it.

But the last bit is still unsolved: how to make all the particles to gather at one point at the end of this curve? Any hints?

Thanks in advance.

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In the Visualization tab of the particle system you can click on Died to render the dead particles. If that does not work for you, you could try adding a collision object and turn on Die on hit in the particle system.

Hmm. I think you didn’t understand what I want :slight_smile:

As you can see from a screenshot, the particles are uniformly spread along all path of movement.
Instead I want all of them to travel to one point in the end of the curve.

Let me show you this schematically (attached).

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Oh OK. Try using a lattice modifier instead of a curve. That way you can bend and taper the particle stream.

Great! Exactly what I wanted, thank you!

Uhm. I tried this on particles that are directing the Explode modifier and in this case it doesn’t work that well, because the lattice is also deforming the emitter mesh which is not what I really want to do for Exploding.

Now I wonder is there any way to make the Lattice affect only particles movement, but not the emitter. Any clues on how to do that or how to work around that? :slight_smile:

I think you will have to describe your set-up in a bit more detail or post a blend. I don’t see why the lattice should necessarily affect the emitter.

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Hmm. How did you do that? :slight_smile: My sphere is always end up deformed by a lattice.

Setup is the following:
There’s a sphere which has:

  • Particle system attached to drive explode modifier
  • Explode modifier
  • Lattice modifier + lattice object which were added thanks to your hints

When I add Lattice it starts to deform the sphere (on frame1) and the particles (exploded faces of the sphere on further frames).

I’ll post the blend later in the evening when I get home.
I must note that I tried to apply transformations to sphere before and after adding the Lattice modifier, but that didn’t help.

Thanks for keeping up with me :slight_smile:

Heya :slight_smile:

Summary: I want to somehow make sphere not to be deformed by the Lattice while at the same time make particles follow shape of the Lattice.

Here’s the blend file. Thanks for helping.

Attachments

explosion.blend (450 KB)

For the Lattice, you have to make it the size to want before you add the modifier - scale it along the x-axis; and then subdivide it (change the number of points in the U V and W directions). Then add the lattice modifier to the sphere. Select the lattice, go into edit mode and narrow the part of the lattice outside of the sphere. To get the particles moving in the right direction you will have to apply an X acceleration and remove the Z acceleration and the normal and random velocity. It is still not clear what your final effect is to be and so I don’t know if this will work for you. I have attached your modified blend.

Attachments

explosion.blend (457 KB)

Oh, great! Thank you!

I did try to edit the lattice prior to adding a modifier, but what I didn’t try is to increase UVW resolution. As I understood by your example, it doesn’t deform the sphere, because editing touches only that vertices of the lattice which are rather far away from it to make any influence happen.

If I edit some that are near to the sphere it’ll be deformed.

Thanks for all the hints! :slight_smile: