Particle Deflection not absolute

Support Basics & Interface
1

Hi

I’m trying to make particles running inside a tube like thing. In a test system I have used a plane as particle emitter and used a cylinder as the tube. I have removed the end faces of the cylinder and made the cylinder deflect the particles. It works to some extent however some of the particles escape the cylinder even though the permeability is zero. How do I avoid this, or is there a better way of doing this?

Regards
Torben

2

Hello, welcome to Elysiun.

You can use a curve guide to constrain the particle movements even more. Look at “hairguides” in this wiki page

http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/PartXIII/Particle_Hair

3

Thanks

Though I think this will not do what I wish to do, but I’ll need more time to go through the tutorial than what I have right now.

The problem is that my “tube” (conductor actually) has a constriction in the middle that the particles (visualising electrons) is to be guided through.

Thanks
Torben

4

Enclose the particle stream inside a Lattice that’s the same shape as your tube, constriction and all.

%<

5

I would agree that using a lattice is the best method for this if you are making an animation. I have tried curve guides, but unless I am doing something wrong (which is quite possible) animated particles do not seem to follow the curve very well unless the particle movement is very slow. Has anyone managed to use curve guides for animated particles?
Alan

6

I agree with fligh% and Alan that a lattice works best for your conductor effect.

Alan: If you use Normal velocity to give particles a starting speed, that vector will be added to the curve guide effect and the particles won’t follow the curve precisely. Same is true for affecting velocity with Random, texture, etc. Particles follow curve guides exactly if the Normal velocity is zero, Keys are sufficiently high (~20), and the curve’s start is positioned exactly on the particle source (eg a vertex). Min/max dist also matter of course. You control the particles’ speed with a Time IPO on the emitter.

7

Thanks CD38. That was a really useful piece of information. I can now use curve guides for animated particles and easily vary the speed of the particles.
Alan

8

Thanks, using lattices gives exactly the result I wanted.

Regards
Torben

9

I’m trying to do basically the same thing (particles in a tube).

Blender 2.41.

I setup a plane as an emitter, created a lattice, made the lattice the parent of the plane, but the particles are not affected by the lattice.

I then added a ‘monkey’ to use as a particle object to see if made any difference (made the emitter-plane the parent of the monkey, turned on dupliverts). The monkey-particles are being emitted but still are not affected by the lattice.

Here’s the blend file.

Mike
What am I missing ?

10

Man I love this place. 25 new things to learn a day. Sure, casually off the top of your head you routinely dole out sage Fligh wisdom… :smiley: leech leech leech the knowledge.

:eek:WOW!:eek:

http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/5281/deflectedparticles0qd.jpg

I don’t have a use for it right now, but that’s pretty damn nifty. The ventauri effect of a nozzle restriction, doing nothing but shaping the nozzle. Notice that the particles don’t immediately fill the tube when it widens, but follow the speed.

For those jaded and unamused, we the newbz salute you!

11

What version of Blender did you do that in?

Could you post the blend file or email it to me at [email protected] ?

Mike

12

2.41 stable.

I can tell you what you’re not doing. Deflection. :slight_smile:

You don’t have to parent the particle emitter mesh to anything, but the object in question needs to have deflection turned on. So then you apply the lattice to that object, reshape it as you will, and emit your particles down it… they will behave.

I did not lattice the plane that’s doing the emission. If I turn up Random, they will escape the tube, and if I move it backwards, outside the tube, the effect is kinda neat, only the particles that “make it into” the tube will be funnelled by the mesh’s defelction + lattice, whereas the particles on the outside just fly away loose. (I don’t have a use for that either right now, but it’s good to know… real world physics. This is so cool.)

So technically I should be able to setup an array of tubes, spray 100,000 particles at them, and whichever particle goes into whatever tube will behave by the deflection setting and lattice deformation of that particular tube. Cool ain’t it?

Play with deflection. If you get stuck, I’ll put up the .blend