hello all
i just got back from a firework display for the 4th of july and i was trying to recreate fireworks in blender. i have it so that it shoots off one particle and it splits into 500 other ones. my problem is that when it splits, they split into the shape of a cube… i’ve had this problem before and i cannot figure it out. my emmitter is a plane with 3 of the 4 verticies deleted.
any ideas?
BMD
use a tiny icosphere?
Hi! I´m not sure that I understand the problem, maybe you could upload some images?
Good luck!
-Detritus
Firstly, try to increase the rand value (one of the purple buttons) to make it more random and get out of the cube shape. If that doesn’t work, here is a url to a fireworks tutorial. its probably not exactly what you mean but there are some useful techniques in there for good fireworks (eg. the dupliverting of lamps for more realism)…
http://oldsite.blender3d.org/showitem.php?id=111
good luck…
d52477001
Hm, I see he problem and have no solution other than that Banana_Sock already mentioned. An icosphere of subdivision 1 and scaled down as emitter. I’ve made fireworks this way.
Settings (if I remeber right; you may have to tweak it a bit)
Total: 1000
Sta 1; End 10
Life: 50
RandLife:0.5
Norm: 0.1
Rand 0.2
Damp 0.2
Force Z: -0.1
Uuups, too late
This is what I got.
For me it is a problem of using a single vertex.
Probably we have to wait for Theeth 
to explain how the particles are calculated to give the cubic shape of the cloud when using a single vertex as emitter.
hmmmm i just tried it with an iscophere, and it’s still cube-shaped
i don’t understand how it could still be cube shaped with an icosphere.
Is your particle emitter (the icosphere) parented to the original emitter yet?
If it is, try it on its own.
Go into edit mode, select all the verts and click the hash button. That fixes some problems with particles.
Maybe you could post a .blend if the problem persists.
ditto, hmmm.
Increasing the Rand value might help
or to wait for someone with a better answer :-?
Meantime try this settings for an icosphere: Same as above except
Norm 0.5
Rand 0.1
Damp 1.0
Doesn’t really solve your problem but confirms that the particle cloud tends to cube somehow. %|
Just noticed: the face button on should do it better.
well the thing is is that it shoots away from the icosphere as one single particle, then 25 frames later, the particle explodes into 600 more particles of a different color.
Ahh, now I understand.
You want to make the flying rocket (i.e. orange) and the explosion (i.e. blue) with one particle effect.
(I only talked about the explosion).
In this case the discussion about the icosphere is meaningless. Your (rocket)particle behaves like a single vertex emitter in this case and it doesn’t matter if it was launched from a single vertex or an icosphere. Obviously one always gets the cube-shaped particle cloud.
The particle child method only works kind of good with a few children.
For your problem I’d suggest an animated single vertex as rocket and an icosphere particle emitter as explosion (none or only a few particle children).
Color changes for the explosion done with a material Ipo.
Don’t know any further. :-?
That’s only a guess, but I would say that it is because the Rand function does not randomize a vector of a given length but only adds a random number on each axis not exceeding the Rand value. Hence the cube shape…
That should be easy to change.
Martin