When animating smoke through particles, how would i get a rolling and swirling effect?
That’s a tricky one but I think I managed to create a twirling tornado affect by simply rotating the vertices/faces that the particles were emitting from. You may have to fiddle with starting speeds and so on but it should work.
You can also create interesting effects by using animated textures. For example, you could use a cloud texture and animate the Offset values in the Materials Buttons (F5). This could create a twirling effect.
Sorry if this isn’t much use to you. I haven’t been working with particles all that much lately.
Cheers
Jon
As always, the first step when learning anything in blender is to read all of the tutorials you can find on the topic. Read the documentation, search Elysiun using the fantabulous search feature located right at the top of every page, and see what you can come up with.
The next step after you’ve done all of that is to post a question which states clearly you’ve done the above and cannot seem to find any information regarding the question. But a good step between the first and second would be to try various methods yourself. Now…I don’t know anything about animating smoke but I know for a fact that if it was me trying to make it look as though it was swirling would be to animate the emitter moving while emitting particles. Thats just an idea but it could be a good starting point. If I didn’t have any success with any of the above, THEN I would ask how to do it correctly, but only after other avenues proved fruitless.
Its kinda an unwritten rule around here at Elysiun that if someone with fewer than say…20 or 30 posts asks a question about something as complicated as particle system, they should be directed toward documentation because they’re likely looking for a quick answer to a question they either don’t know how to look for the answer to, or are too lazy to try and find.
By the way…I’m not mad or trying to sound nasty, I’m just trying to tell you how things work best around here. Hope you have some luck!
Strange, I didn’t know that unwritten rule.
anyway, presuming that everyone with a low post count is lazy and didn’t look is really stupid IMHO.
Ok, to answer the question this could somehow be done by using the 8th texture channel to control the particles through a texture, or by using a lattice.
There’s a tutorial about using the 8th texture channel at the oldsite
Martin
Theeth - I wasn’t trying to imply that everyone with a low post count is lazy. I was saying that 9 times out of 10 its obvious when someone has done their homework and when they haven’t.
I knew someone would call me on that post for being a wise-ass or a lamer…oh well.
Here’s a linke to a couple blend files which have pretty convincing looking particle smoke in them:
I get what your saying Desoto and I thought I would point out that I have spent the last two days looking though tutes, old posts, and trying out different things for myself. After many attempts without getting the desired result I though it might be a good idea to ask some people who might have the answer.
Thankyou for making that effort Kram. I appreciate it, as does everyone else. I hope the link I provided was helpful!
It was, thanks for the help and thanks everyone else.
What about using a lattice?
YOu can also RVK (Relative Vertex Key) the lattice for supra-cool swirling effects!
Stefano
The lattice gets recalculated each frame when calculating the particles?
Martin
Hehehe… haven’t tried 
(But it would be cool)
/me tries
Stefano
Ok, it does not work.
These particles needs a fix
Stefano
the particle system imho needs some serious rework.
deformations forces are missing so bad. the lattice is somehow usefull but not always enough!
and linking animated objects to a particle would be nice.#so that each fish of the fish school is moving as well!
or is that possible already?
claas
Possible,
see the shells here
http://reblended.com/www/s68/movies/BM1.avi
Those are rotating objects dupliverted on a particle system.
Stefano
hey and to reply to that stuck up guy, I’ve been using blender since 1998 and I still don’t know how to do everything people come up with different ways of doing things! just because a person only has 5 posts does’nt mean their a newbie, to hell with your unwritten rules, if you can’t help the man don’t speak!