Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Image 1a: Particles can move to the position of other particles with
Keyed physics.
I will show on this page two ways to let particles take the shape of other objects.
1. keyed particle physics (Img. 1a)
2. a harmonic force field with a damping of 1. The force field is emitted by another particle system, so that each
particle is attracted by another particle (Img. 1b).
v2.48
The second method is easier to control, but I've found that it may not work exact enough. Even if you use RK4
as calculation method, there are some glitches in the precision of the calculation, so that your particles may not
come to a standstill (depending on the size of the particles and their number this may be visible or not).
v2.49
That the particles didn't come to a standstill has been a bug that Jahka has fixed in 2.49. So if you use Version
2.49 and upwards you will find it easier to work with the harmonic force field.
Plan Ahead!
Make it easy for yourself. If you know beforehand what will happen at each important frame, you will
save a lot of time fiddling with the parameters.
Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Particles forming Shapes 2
Keyed Physics
So here we're going to use keyed particle physics and quite a few different particle systems.
Basically this is the way to go:
• Use mesh objects and let them emit particles.
• Each system moves to another system because of the keyed physics.
• Choose a good visualization of the particles and animate that also.
• At last the hard part: sync the different animations.
The animation shall last 300 frames, this will be 12 seconds.
- In the first 2 seconds the word "Blender" shall appear (frame 1 to 50).
- Than Suzanne shall build up in 3 seconds (frame 51 to 150).
- Suzanne shall be clearly visible for a few frames (frame 151 to 200).
- After that the form shall dissolve and the particles move a bit until they vanish (frame 200 to 300)
• Amount 20.000
• Sta: 151, End: 151, Life: 150, Rand: 0.5. The lifetime is randomized from 151/2 to 151 frames.
• Emit from:
• Random/Faces/Even/Random
• Bake: End frame 300. Though we don't use baking here, you have to set the End frame in the Bake panel. Else the
last 50 frames wouldn't be calculated.
• Time: Absolute
Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Particles forming Shapes 4
Blender-first
• Assign the material also to "Blender-first".
• Make the material a Single User Copy by clicking on the small number next to the material name.
• Set Alpha to 0.438.
Blender-last
• Assign the "Blender-first" also to Blender-last".
• Make the material a Single User Copy by clicking on the small number next to the material name.
• Animate the alpha value of the material.
• Insert an Ipo key for Alpha in frame 50.
• Change to frame 150.
• Set Alpha to 1.
• Insert an Ipo key for Alpha.
Now the brightness of all systems are matched.
Links
• Download the blend file [1]
• Manual about Particle physics [2]
• Choose a good visualization of the particles and animate that also. This is difficult and maybe you should animate
the visualization at last.
• At last the hard part: sync the different animations and force fields.
• Use field type Harmonic. Now the particles from the object "2.5" do
attract the particles from the object "Blender".
• The Strength of the force field determines the time the particles
need to reach the target. Set it accordingly.
• The Damp(ing) makes sure, that the particles move to their target
but not beyond.
Image 3b: The particle system gets the force
Do the same for the object "The big leap ...", i.e. select the particle field.
system and give it a Harmonic force field.
I have used a Wind field in the last frames to blow the particles away.
Links
• The Blend file to download [3]
• The manual about force fields [4]
References
[1] http:/ / www. snapdrive. net/ files/ 180816/ Blender3D_PartikelShapingObjects-2. 48a. zip
[2] http:/ / wiki. blender. org/ index. php/ Doc:Manual/ Physics/ Particles/ Particle_physics
[3] http:/ / www. snapdrive. net/ files/ 180816/ Blender3D_HarmonicFieldText. blend. zip
[4] http:/ / wiki. blender. org/ index. php/ Doc:Manual/ Physics/ Force_Fields
Article Sources and Contributors 7
License
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
http:/ / creativecommons. org/ licenses/ by-sa/ 3. 0/