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Particle Animation Issue (3DS MAX)

animatoranimator0 Posts: 0Member
edited November 2010 in Technical Questions and Answers #1
Hi,

Attached is a preview from a scene, illustrating a problem which I have continually run into with 3DS Max for years. That being the effect of the animation of an emitter on its particles. Despite disabling all motion inherritence on this Super Spray system, the particles refuse to follow a straight path. I have even tried setting a motion path constraint for them, which made no difference.

Have I missed something obvious, or is this something which will require me to learn Maxscript (which is probably a good idea in any case)? :confused:

Thanks,

animator,
Post edited by animator on

Posts

  • MelakMelak332 Posts: 0Member
    #2
    Sorry I don't quite get what you are asking - looking at the video I can't see the emitter exerting any influence on the particles.

    As best as I can tell, your particles are moving in perfectly straight trajectories. If the particles not hitting the target is the problem, you have 3 options that I can see:

    1. Make the particles go faster til they hit.
    2. Cheat and compromise, have the particles seek out the target, following a curved path, but hitting it.
    3. Do what you would need to do with a real gun: lead the shots. Now you could write a really fancy piece of max script that tries to approximate the motion of the target and tries to adjust the aim....But you could also cheat (again :p):

    Create a target dummy if you haven't already, let your cannon face that, and animate it over the same path as the actual target object - only a bit ahead of the target. How much ahead depends on the distance to the gun and the speed of your projectiles.
  • animatoranimator0 Posts: 0Member
    #3
    I may have been slightly under-descriptive. The particles from the SS need to take the form of a straight beam (think Phaser beam), rather than continuing on separate paths when the emitter rotates.

    Increasing the speed improves results slightly, however in order for the beam to be straight, it would need to be set very high (which means a higher emit rate is needed).
  • MelakMelak332 Posts: 0Member
    #4
    Oh..I think in that case you will want to enable motion inheritance...so that the stream of particles stays aligned to where the source is pointing.

    I think though, that will only impart the emitters movement at the time of emitting, onto the particles. I believe there's a "lock particles to emitter" option as well - that should fix them to source, so even if it rotates the particles should move with it. (This actually means that the particles will follow anything but a straight line, but I get now what you want :))

    I'll have a look at the options.
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