Animated Map as emitter source

[ben_hamburg]

Hi there,

I´m currently working on a shot with a collapsing bone in closeup. I have sculpted a fracture into the bone in Zbrush and created a displacement map to use in 3ds Max. I also used a radial gradient map in a composite map to animate the fracturing of the bone and a morph target for the collapsing of the bone.
I also used the same displacement map to drive a pflow setup to emit some debris to make the fracturing more dynamic.

So far so good.

But now I wanted to get that extra sparkle and also use that map to emit some dust via Phoenix.

I´m having two issues now:

1. It seems a bit, as if the emitter isnt using the complete output of the composite map, but rather only the gradient ramp used to mask out the animation of the fracturemap. Is it possible to animate the emitter with such a composite map, or do I rather have to create an image sequenz for the animation to use in the sources map slot?

2. I´m having trouble getting the dynamics right. Right now the smoke seems way too heavy, it immediately starts sinking down very fast, alsmost like a liquid.

I already played around with the dynamics settings and turned all values upside down, but nothing seenmed to help...

Can you help me with this info or should a prepare a scene for support?

[ben_hamburg]

Ok, seems I found the problem: If I reduce the velocity in the animated objects phoenix properties (in my case to around 0.005), I get something much closer to what I was expecting.

[ben_hamburg]

Actually...its a bit hard to see, but with the dynamics fixed it also looks, like the emitter map is also working as it should be. Gotta check back after rendering though...