[C5] Particles flow and deflectors

[Thomas]

In this tutorial two-part tutorial, focused on Carrara 5 particles, we will see how to change the orientation of a flow of particles, from the creation of the particles editor and its parameters to the final render, after setting up the shaders and deflectors.

[Thomas]

First part: Creation of the particles generator and shader.

In the Assembly room, insert a Particle Generator (Drag the icon in the scene) The parameters of the particles open in the modeling room:

Now, change some settings for the particles: 1 - Change the particles type: choose Facing camera. It means that when the particles are rendered they face the camera. It's perfect for special effects. 2 - Change the Emitter emission surface. Enter a value like 2x2x2. 3 - Change the Lifetime variation to a higher value, to create a more natural particle generation. 4 - Increase the particle size and variation of size. You can change the other parameters too, but don't change or reduce the dispersion angle parameters. 5 - Edit the curve of particle size, as explained in the next part.

The Particle size editor is a kind of curve editor, which allows you to edit its size and life: 1 - Check the smooth button. 2 - Edit the two handles to change the curve itself. When done, click OK to exit the editor.

It's time to edit some advanced parameters: 1 - Click on the Advanced tab. 2 - Set all values to 0. A fire doesn’t bounce and doesn’t have air friction, etc. 3 - Set 0 for the gravity value.

Now, switch to an image editor such as Photoshop and create a fire map on a transparency layer, like the example below. This map is included in the archive at the end of this tutorial. Save it in PNG 24 format. The transparency channel will be saved, like this:

Go back to Carrara 5 and edit the particle shader: 1 - Add the map made in the image editor in the Color channel. 2 - Copy it (CTRL/Command+Drag) to the Glow channel to create a brighter fire.

In the Assembly room, move the time slider to display some particles and do a test render. You should have something like the image below:

[Thomas]

Second part: Deflector and final render

In the assembly room, drag a vertex object, and switch to the modeling room.

In the construct menu, choose Insert 3D > Cylinder.

Set the different values: 1 - Choose a large value for the Height. 2 - Increase the section value, which will allow for smoother deformation later. 3 - Set the creation axis to Y. 4 - Click OK to validate.

Remove the caps on both side of the cylinder (Del Key).

In the assembly room, add some bones inside the cylinder. Be careful of the placement of the bones.

Select both bones (pick the parent) and the cylinder, and in the Skinning menu choose "Attach Skelton".

Now, rotate some bones. The cylinder should be deformed by the bones, like the example below. If you need to, you can change the bones influences in the vertex room.

Undo your rotation and put your particle emitter on the opening of the cylinder. You will need to rotate the emitter to put it on the opening of this cylinder.

Double click on the Particle emitter to edit its parameters (or select it in the Assembly room and click on the Modeling room icon) and switch to the Advanced tab: 1 - Check the Collide with Scene check box. 2 - Check the “Only” radio button. 3 - Click on the "Change" button and add the Cylinder (Tube in the example). 4 - The Tube should appear on the list.

Now check the particles inside the Cylinder deformed with the bones. You can also scale the bones to change the Cylinder radius. Remember that the particles collide with the Cylinder, but only on the hotpoint. It's OK if the particles go out of the tube a little bit.

Click on the Cylinder and in the Property panel, uncheck the Visible parameter. By doing this, the cylinder won't be rendered.

It's time to do a test render of the deflected parameters. You should have something like the render below:

After some tweaking of the particles parameters and shader modification, you should have easily something like below:

And that’s it! You now know how to change the flow of your particles with the help of hidden deflectors in Carrara 5.

Download the sprite

[Grendel]

Great tutorial Thomas, I can't wait until my C5 is delivered.

[AWBenson]

Great tutorial, keep up the excellent work.

[Thomas]

Thanks

[pnoland]

Very cool tutorial, I'm finding C5's particles very intuitive unlike other apps I have.

[bwtr]

Thomas, great fantastic tute. However, my Internet Explorer-my whole computer is clean and updated to the second--downloads the sprite zip as faulty. It is without doubt an you/IE incompatability. The first time in 3 years I have been able to pinpoint such a problem so clearly.

[Thomas]

bwtr : it works for me on both IE and Firefox, on two different computers. And it opens without errors with the windows zip folder (not even winrar...)
Try right click>save as

[bwtr]

I had, earlier, downloaded OK via Firefox. None of some 6 downloads via IE would be accepted for opening by Winzip or X-Ace Plus! It seems very odd, still, that only this site has given me problems? You will have noted others complaining also. I am a very busy downloader and the site connection to this problem is pretty strong. Hope all this of some help.

Again, this tute is great--enjoyed doing this one a lot--HUGE learning curve.

[Thomas]

(Did you empty your cache before trying again with IE? IE realy sucks as a browser... All the problems are with IE.. and these problems are around 0.01% of connection problems... (and not probably for my site, no bandwidth problems since a very long time...)

[Naomi]

I tried to download and unzip the sprite file and got pretty much nowhere. It downloaded fine, but when I try to unzip it this is the problem reported:

Extracting to "C:\Documents and Settings\Naomi\Desktop\"
Use Path: yes Overlay Files: no
warning [C:\Documents and Settings\Naomi\Desktop\sprite.zip]: extra 135 bytes at beginning or within Zip file (attempting to process anyway)
Error in file #1: bad Zip file offset (Error local header signature not found): 0
(attempting to re-compensate)
Error in file #1: bad Zip file offset (Error local header signature not found): 0

Yeah, I use IE and it is the only browser I have. I usually never have a problem downloading and unzipping files?

[LoneGunman]

Just a quick response here, it is wierd, IE download does not work, but Firefox does...

Thomas, just humor me, , do you mind if I upload this file to my server and see are people gonna have problems downloading it from there with IE (i heard that some content menagment PHP packages like the one you most likely use to upload your ZIP files to this server have certain problems embeding ZIP files)???

[Naomi]

Oh, that would be lovely! Then I could do the tutorial as shown. (Assuming it will download correctly from your site).

I know I had a problem before from this site getting a .rar file. That time it downloaded, but with a php suffix. I was able to get around it that time, by renaming the .php to .rar before doing the extraction. But this time, the file downloaded with a .zip suffix, so there was nothing I could see to change or fix before trying to unzip it.

[LoneGunman]

Oh, well, need to go to work now, I will do it later, since I'm still waiting approval to upload it to my webspace, talk to ya all in 7 hours

[Thomas]

I put a direct link to the file, take a look at it.
I'm checking the forum to see if their is not an attachement corruption somewhere... this problem is realy strange...

[bwtr]

Oh dear!

[Naomi]

The direct link worked like a charm Thomas! Thanks. Now I can go thru the tutorial using the original file.

[LoneGunman]

I'm glad you guys sorted it out, Thomas, if you are more interested about this particular problem, you can post question about it in VBulettin official forum, I believe it happend before

[Thomas]

I already had an answer, and my admin is checking something on the server (I have the best admins ever seen ;)