Particle Generator Experiments
Dave Savage
Posts: 2,433
Ok, I know this is probably not something new for some people around here, but I've just discovered it and can't find anywhere where anyone has written on the subject so I'm making this post to document my findings while exploring the not very often used Bryce Particle Emitter.
We all know the Particle Emitter is there (hidden) but I think a lot of people struggle to find a use for it.
Why? Well one really good reason is that the particles don't recognise the geometry they come into contact with and will pass straight through Bryce primitives and mesh objects as if they weren't there (with the exception of the ground plain which they happily bounce around on).
So how did I do this then?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhbN2omslRU
The short answer: I found completely by accident that the particles will also bounce off Boolean Objects.
But it's never THAT simple... It only really works with boolean blocks. Try making a Boolean sphere and the particles will simply bounce off the bounding box and not the actual geometry... Same with any other shape.
It only works with blocks because the bounding box is the same size and shape as the geometry and this means that you have to make your Boolean with the block completely unrotated in all directions X. Y and Z rotation set to 0. After you have made the boolean, you can then resize and tilt it in any direction you wish as the bounding box will also tilt.
If you make your Boolean block when it is tilted, the bounding box will still be square to the ground plane and not following the geometry and therefore, the particles hitting it will also not follow the geometry but instead bounce off the bounding box.
Then it's just a matter of playing with the amount, gravity and velocity of the particles and adjusting angles and sizes to have fun bouncing the particles around...
Horo's very helpful video tutorial to get you started with the particle emitter and it's small amount of controls is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-XVYh4O-hk
Hope this helps people and have fun.
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Comments
Bah – I was so annoyed when I found out this particle emitter gadget was a thing... But a nice discovery about boolean bounce, Savage :)
What about the users who can not view video, because they have only one USB Internet Stick ???
edit: Where is the particle generator ?
one from 2010 -
http://youtu.be/LiPLnslTIg8?list=UUSDQPl5q0QoWh0fIj9dXMpg
2 -
http://youtu.be/45QrZoi00D0?list=UUSDQPl5q0QoWh0fIj9dXMpg
here -
@Dave - interesting observation. I haven't used the PE for ages but recognised its use on your video immediately.
@Roland4 - the Particle Editor is an easter egg, i.e. a function not fully working to specs, of limited use and therefore not directly available. Because it works partly with animation, a written tutorial of this unofficial tool doesn't make much sense.
here -
I dont understand, perhaps a little bit more text.
Dave Thanks for this thread, I would love to try something like this.
Bigh -Thanks for sharing your videos too.
Roland:
1. CNTL-click the 2D square. Congratulations: You have created a particle emitter.
2. Use the Scrub tool to shuttle the timeline forward and back. You will see lines emerging from the square. Those represent lines of motion for the particle spheres.
3. To adjust the parameters from default: use the Randomise Options tools, and the CNTL key.
CNTL-2D Disperse = Gravity
CNTL-2D Disperse Rotate = Max Particles
CNTL-2D Disperse Size = Velocity Scaler (Speed)
4. You can change the material of the particles, but not the shape: they're always spheres.
5. Particle emitters are created constantly emitting particles, and have no accessible animation parameters (other than the common position/rotation/scale etc. parameters). So changes in Gravity, Max. Particles, On/Off, Velocity, even material animation, are not possible.
And now...
6. You can bounce particles off the bounding boxes of grouped objects.
===
Roland: what do you mean 'one USB Internet stick'? If you can post on the Internet you have access to the Internet. If you have a web browser to post, then you probably have the software to view YouTube videos. What am I missing here?
Or leaves :cheese:
The Internet Stick has a limited amount of data per month for downloads and if i look videos, the volume is emty in 1 week.
Roland, you should be seeing something like this (see picture).
By moving the scrubber left to right (highlighted in my pic with the red circle), the lines will start to appear from the square 2D plane.
You won't see the particles in the main window, only the lines that represent their speed, amount and direction.
To see how they really look, you have to render the picture.
Roland, you should be seeing something like this (see picture).
By moving the scrubber left to right (highlighted in my pic with the red circle), the lines will start to appear from the square 2D plane.
You won't see the particles in the main window, only the lines that represent their speed, amount and direction.
To see how they really look, you have to render the picture.
The picture you show i can not see. I can only see the spheres if i render.
The spheres are the particles.
The spheres are the particles.
The spheres in the preview window on the up left i can see, but i can not see what he show in the picture in the main window. I also can not see lines if i moving the scrubber.
Roland, I don't know what's wrong because I can't get it to not show the lines when I move the scrubber.
But just to rule out manually moving the scrubber possibilities could you try this:
1: Go to 'Animation Setup' in the File Menu
2: In 'Duration' type a 4 in the 'Seconds' box
3: Click the tick
4: Click the icon to go into the animation controls (the little Gridded Circle at the very bottom Right of the Bryce WorkSpace)
5: Click the 'Play' button
Your animation should now start playing in Wireframe in the main window and hopefully you'll see the little lines being emitted from the square 2D plane. If you can, then click the Stop button and your animation will freeze at that point. You can then render a single image of that frame.
A shower of gobstoppers.
@TheSavage64
You mean in the Advanced Motion Lab ? Yes there i can see what you show in the picture, but only here.
edit: If i click some buttons in the Advanced Motion Lab, Bryce crashed.
Roland: Now it makes sense, you have your wireframe settings on Open GL.
If you change them to Default Wireframe as pictured below.
Yes, the AML can be a bit unstable... And no need to go there right now.
@TheSavage64
Thank you for your patience. Now all is ok, after i switch to wireframe i can see the particles. Too bad that you can not do much with it.
A leave material on a sphere is still a sphere dude :) There are a lot of users with English as a second language: you don't want them hunting for a leaf button, do you? :D
@Oroboros and others: loved the animations with particle emitter. I hardly ever used it, but then, I hardly ever to animation either.
@TheSavage64: Holy moly, you created Easter eggs with the Easter egg!
Did you get the version that hasn't got the leaf button? :lol:
Seriously: I thought it was interesting to show that you're not restricted to only rendering round balls with the particle emitter.
And it took some considerable time to figure out the optimum mapping mode (and to edit the trans map accordingly) because those little particles aren't actually built like any other geometry in Bryce and therefore, don't map the same.
I'm also not sure they would work in an animation... In fact, even if they did I doubt anyone would be bothered to wait for it to render.
That single picture took just over 30 minutes to render at the lowest render settings... Without the leaves blowing in the wind, it would have taken about 3 minutes.
Yeah... Transparency adds up. You don't really notice it in a common render, as the number of transparent objects you might have is under 10... Maybe 30 in a complex scene. But when you start chucking 100's of the little buggers into a scene, you really want to take a hard look at your Render Options and think about things like decreasing max. ray depth and TIR before even looking at the Render button.
As I've said... This easter egg hurt me. It's a hack. It doesn't have the flexibility required to make it work practically in a scene: you have to hack the hack. If it was to have practical value it needs a bunch of other core features, the most important of which is, of course, addressable parameters. As it is, I find it a depressing example of unexploited potential :/
Is the camera suppose to rotate when the scrubber is moved? I'm asking because in following the posted instructions the camera always moves when I move the scrubber.
No Guss, it won't move unless you've moved it and you've got Auto Key switched on.
Select the camera and go into the AML, select the Camera timeline and open up it's nested time lines. Then select the Rotate timeline's Title by clicking it while pressing the Shift key and you get a pop up sub menu. The last item is to Delete All Keyframes.
Do that and your camera then won't rotate until you set new keyframes (if you want them).
Make sure Auto Key is switched off.
@Dave: Took me a few moments to find everything, but once I did and deleted key frames the camera didn't rotate. Thank you Dave.
@TheSavage64: Thank you for your research. Interesting stuff to experiment with, unfortunately I have not a lot of time to do so.
The thing with the leaves is great. You can only use a sphere for the Particle emitter, but I asked myself, can you change the shape of it e.g. you shrink the sphere's height?
@Oro - to be fair, when the PE was discovered by a programmer, we were all very hesitant to have the code unlocked. The PE shouldn't be advertised, it's really only a code fragment. It was discovered quite late near the end of the dev cycle.
I've used it once for fruit on a tree, snow, mirror balls. You can set up several PE faces, give them different colours and also different orientations to blow them sideways and such.
@Dave - the leaf trick is really neat. Pity transmaps needs so much time to render.
No, sadly not Elvis. When you use the 'Resize' tools it just alters the size of the 2D face that they emit from.
What actually comes out remains round.... Hence the need to apply a trans map to alter it's shape.
Glad you got it sorted Guss
Thanks Horo. It's obviously not restricted to leaves either.
Originally I was looking at applying a picture of a spark to the particles, so that I could drive it from the ambient channel to get glowing sparks. It was only when the mapping became a problem that I changed my idea to a leaf. When I get a minute, I'll maybe return to the spark idea.
I also wonder about the possibility of a 3D trans map created in the alpha channel of the DTE, but again, spare time is the issue at the moment... As well as the problem of long render times to test if it works as an animation.