Particle Question

[Syclone1]

Anyone have any ideas? We need to simulate a large pipe in the ground with a bunch of debris in (small rocks and chunks of metal) thats in a large U shape. Then send a sort of pipe cleaner through it and show it pushing all the debris along inside the pipe... not sure what the best way to approach it would be. Thought about buying thinking particles but it is a bit much or would particle flow or reactor be better suited or another plugin that Im not aware of...?

Thanks in advance,

-dave

I can provide a rough render/sketch if needed on what I need to acomplish...

[studioDIM]

how much debris would you need?
Tens, Hundreds or thoushands of bits?


Lele

[joconnell]

A good quote I heard is that if you dont know why you need to buy thinking particles then you dont need to buy thinking particles. Reactor, simcloth or particle flow can do this quite easily, choose one and I can give you more specific advice.

[Syclone1]

prob just a couple hundred bits at the most

[studioDIM]

i'd go reactor then, prolly more straightforward and easier to preview than particles.
I also found PF to be somewhat lacklustre in interparticles collisions and similar stuff, in that it gets rapidly very slow, and i couldn't make it sense particle shapes properly to detect collisions.
This, using an "Avoid behaviour".
Possibly Jo has better ways.

Lele

[Syclone1]

Hi Joe, Lele. ill prob end up trying to use reactor as current advises are pointing to that and its the cheepes solution so far any tips on using reactor would be great also...

thanks again,

-dave

[studioDIM]

Ah, glad it helps bits

Reactor's fairly easy to setup and work.
Would probably be easier if you had direct questions on it, though


Lele

[charleyc]

Depending on how precise your interparticle collisions would have to be, you can get some pretty decent results for this with Particle Flow. The advantage to PFlow for this type of effect is that you can have a more natural deterioration of the clog with particles than with reactor (if needed). However it would really not be that hard to use both.

Another solution (or part of your solution) would be to have a pre-modeled clog and use path deform to push it along. You could use that with your reactor solution and/or have pFlow particles breaking free.

[joconnell]

For ease of use I actually found simcloth a lot better than reactor to get somethign good - reactor tends to send objects flying everywhere for no reason if your mass and scale is wrong.

[studioDIM]

I say use Realflow! Play with density for the clog, and release the lot through an animated density curve

Absolutely taking the piss :P
I just thought it was missing yet


Lele

[panthon]

I would use particle flow. Hundreds of objects are a bit too much for reactor, and it would be hard to tweak. On the other hand, with particle flow, you will lose collision accuracy, but in that large scale it will be barely noticeable. If you do need a closeup, you just can switch to reactor for that particular shot (providing that you are using CWF, cinema workflow, instead of WWF, walkthrough workflow) and use a few debris chunks which will collide properly.

If you use Particle flow, don't switch geometry in viewport on unless u have a small number of them, otherwise max will crash and burn. You can coreograph your animation with simple dots to your heart's content, and then connect "show geometry in viewport" to check the scale and rotation of the particles.

If you are into particles, I would recommend getting Allan Mckay particles videotutorials. They will help u get up and running in no time.

[joconnell]

Well, particle flow wont give you accurate collisions and with all of the inter collisions will become extremely slow as lele said. In something like this I generally find that there's far too much going on visually on the screen to make anything out in particular so the accuracy is slightly less of a factor. I found reactor very hard to get a decent result with quickly purely down to its reall world scale and mass ties - I found simcloth to be a good solution overall. I've also written a utility for changing the properties of simcloth objects on a mass basis and another utility for tracking one object to another so you can use low res proxy objects in your simcloth simultation and then track on much higher res geometry for the render...

[Syclone1]

its not so much a clog so to speak, let me see if I can get more specific. Its for a simulation where in an oil pipeline about say with a 4' inside diameter running through a valley (the section being shown is a couple Km long) has whats called a "pig" running through it that cleans any crap out sitting in the bottom of the pipeline. there would be a small amount of sedement and maby some rocks and in this case a few chunks of metal about 6"x9" that ultimately get it stuck. We have to show the pig pushing the sludge along the bottom and getting stuck up the pipeline... the pile of crap being cleaned out would prob be about 12" to 18" high in the pipeline

The link above is a guy working on pig's

Hopefully that clears it up a little more

-dave

[joconnell]

I'll make a few sample scenes this evening using simcloth and particle flow - hopefully will give you some ideas.

[Syclone1]

I'll make a few sample scenes this evening using simcloth and particle flow - hopefully will give you some ideas.

Cool that would be great