I found a couple people asking this question in the Google-Verse, but have yet to find an answer:
I'm animating blood flow in a vein, and would like to pause the movement, then restart it along the same path (and repeat). Keyframing a hold in the position along path doesn't quite work: if I sync by particle age, the "pause" is spread out over time, if I sync by event age (or absolute), the particles drift off the path.
Maybe something in "Box 3" would work? Maybe a curve overlaid on my PFlow system? Any suggestions welcomed. Thanks--
Jeff B.
I would have to see your particle system to get a better idea of what can be done but I would do the following:
-Add a Drag Space Warp to your scene (Create (tab) > Space Warps > Forces > Drag)
-Add a Force operator in your particle event and animate the Influence amount with some kind of stepped shape animation curve
-You would most likely have to set the Linear Damping of the Drag to something high enough to stop or almost stop your particles
Alternately if you have access to the MassFX particle operators/tests (depends of your version of Max), you could probably also use the "mP Drag" operator to acheive similar results without having the need to make a Space Warp.
Seemed promising.
Unfortunately, this also produces the effect that particles stop following the path.
thanks for the thought, though.
-Jeff
Finally figured this out... much easier than I was making it. Just need to add "pauses" in the path percentage keyframes. Image attached that should explain it. The other requirement seems to be to keep the particle emission at a multiple of your "pulse" duration.
Just following up and updating,,, i have a speed by icon constrained to a path and my PF particles are following it.
I did what @jeff did, by creating a "pause" along the curve in trackview, except i only created one pause at frame 1600 the pause lasts for 25 frames and then particle continues to move.
what is interesting is that every time another particle reaches the place the first particle was paused, it also pauses itself for 25 frames and then continues to move. in my case this is perfect because i wanted all my particles to pause at that exact place and then resume.
Best way so far to pause particle flow movement.
Well Done and Thank You.
3ds Max 2018.4
Windows 10