topic Re: birth particles where light hits plane in 3ds Max Animation and Rigging Forum

birth particles where light hits plane

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Jun 2018 18:04:16 GMT

I remember seeing a tutorial somewhere where particles were birthed where the cone of a spotlight intersected with a plane. I may be imagining things. Does anybody know it? Or can anybody give a quick summary?

Thanks

Mark

Re: birth particles where light hits plane

Anonymous — Sat, 09 Jun 2018 10:13:08 GMT

What you can try is this (untested)

2)Create a Cone primitve that resembles the boundries of the spotlight cone.

3) Link the Cone to the spotlight

4) Use VolSelect on your geometry and pick the cone primitive to select the vertices within the boundries of the cone.

5) in ParticleFlow use Position Object->Emitter Objects to pick your geometry and set the location of the particles to 'Selected Vertices'.

Re: birth particles where light hits plane

Anonymous — Sat, 09 Jun 2018 11:07:38 GMT

Thanks. You've got me thinking now.

What I'm actually trying to do is create a spherical volume around a camera where particles are birthed. The camera will be tracked, and in any given frame ....

1) existing particles remaining within the volume will be untouched

2) existing particles that have fallen outside the volume will be deleted

3) new particles will be created in the new area which now falls inside the volume

I'm going to give it a try with a Data Operator. If anyone wants to chip in wth suggestions, I'd appreciate it.

Thank you

Re: birth particles where light hits plane

Anonymous — Sat, 09 Jun 2018 15:59:40 GMT

You mean like that?

Re: birth particles where light hits plane

Anonymous — Sun, 10 Jun 2018 10:30:37 GMT

Not quite, but thanks to your help, I've got it pretty close to what I'm aiming for. The attached file is max 2015.

I haven't tested it properly yet, but I'm hoping this will provide some distance culling and memory conservation in PFlow systems containing tens or hundreds of thousands of particles.

Thanks again for the help. I really appreciate it.