I know literally nothing about particle effects, but I need to make a smokestack for a project. In the tutorial section, there is a great cigarette-smoke blender file that is mostly what I’m looking for (the look of the smoke is perfect), but the pillar of smoke rises entirely too fast. How can I slow down my smoke? I tried manipulating the z-force, but that makes my pillar really skinny, and odd looking. What to do?
Thanks.
what you need to do is give a little random starting speed for the particles, so just find “rand” and raise it just a little bit until it looks just right
there are two buttons you need to worry about, in the animation window, the norm and rand buttons. The norm button lets you assign a constant starting speed for all the particles. Just using rand will give you particles that go exactly one direction. If you add a rand value, it gives the particles a more random value.
Eg, if you have a norm of 1, and a rand of .2, the particles will have a starting speed of 0.8 to 1.2
Anyway, in answer to your question, reduce the norm value to slow down the particles. Forces only act on the particles after the are produced.