Introductory Tutorial

This tutorial is meant to give you a basic understanding of how to navigate Particle Storm 2's interface, add and edit controllers, and move your camera. You will learn how the Fountain Emitter works, how to edit Wind and Gravity, how to use Collision Detection, and how to color your particles. All emitters and objects in this tutorial are non-moving, even though they can be parented to objects and nulls in Layout (you'll get to that!). As you advance through the tutorials, additional controls and features will be added to provide you with a deeper understanding of Particle Storm 2.

Run Particle Storm 2 by going to the Options panel, clicking on Generic Plug-ins, and choosing Particle Storm2. The interface will appear. Click Clear in the upper left corner to start with a fresh scene. Press the Play button. (Figure 1) You will see the default scene of particles falling downward out of the particle with Gravity applied to them.

Now move the mouse while holding the SHIFT key and the left mouse button. The camera is moving on the X and Z axis. Holding SHIFT and the right mouse button moves it on the Y axis. Using the CTRL key with the left and right mouse buttons will rotate the camera.

In the Property window, you will see that the emitters' Position is defaulted to selected, denoted by the yellow highlighting. Click on the red arrow in the Position box. The menu expands to show the X,Y, and Z values. Hold your mouse arrow over the up/down numeric sliders and slide it up and down. You will see the emitter moving on that axis in the preview window. Now manually change all three Position settings to 0,0,0. Tabbing will move between fields. Now your emitter is back in the center of the grid. (Figure 2)

Figure 2

Open the Orientation menu. Heading, Pitch, and Bank are adjusted the same way. Set the values to 0, 270, 0 to point the emitter straight up. (Figure 3)

Figure 3

Open the Scale menu. The scale on the X,Y, and Z axis can stretch and distort your emitter.

*Note: If you are emitting from a LightWave object, the object's scale cannot be edited in Particle Storm. Changing the scale from the 100% defaults will have the particles emitting from the space around the object instead of the object itself.

Change the Birth Rate of the particles to 1000 (Shown in Figure 2). Now many more particles are coming from the emitter. In the shape type, it is defaulted to Ellipse Volume. Change that to Ellipse Surface. You will see the particles being emitted from the surface of the ellipse instead of from inside it. The Box Volume and Box Surface selections will change the default emitter to a box. (Figure 4)

Figure 4- The mouse arrow will not appear on the popup menus. This is a limitation of LightWave's Panels.

Select LWObject Vertices. The emitter will disappear. Under the selector a File button has appeared. Click it, and select a LW object to load into Particle Storm (The LW Cow works well). You will see the particles emitting from the vertices of the object. (Figure 5) Changing the emitter type to LWObject Faces will have the particles emit from the polygon faces of the object. Selecting LWBitmap will allow the particles to emit from a bitmap. Return to Box Volume and set the scale to 50,50,50.

Figure 5

In the Birth Rate selector, click on the Constant button and select Envelope. Click on Edit Envelope. (Figure 6)

Figure 6

The custom envelope editor will pop up. The envelope is showing a constant birth rate of 1000. Click on any value for frame 15. The click on the Drag crosshairs and drag the value to 0. In the preview window you will see your particles' birth rate go from 1000 to 0 in 15 frames. Click on a value for frame 30. In the Value numeric box below the timeline, enter a value of 50. Now your particles are showing the change in birth rate from 1000 to 0 to 50 in 30 frames. (Figure 7)

Figure 7- The envelope editor will automatically scale itself to fit your settings into the window.

In the Initial Color field, click the Edit Color button. (Figure 8)

Figure 8

The Color Picker will pop up. The Color Picker allows you to set a constant color for your particles. Click anywhere in the color picker box and slide the density scale to achieve the desired color. Changing the value in the A box will affect the Alpha Channel settings, thereby making your particles transparent. Choose a blue color, and then click OK to save your settings. (Figure 9)

Figure 9

The Color From Source selector allows your particles to retain the color of the source object they are emitted from. If they are emitted from the faces, they will take on the color of the particular face they are coming off of. (Figure 10)

Change the Minimum Speed to 10 m/s and the Maximum Speed to 20 m/s. Now change the Minimum Speed back to 1 m/s. With the first setting, the particles will shoot out a at high rate of speed. The second setting allows some of them to come out at a slower pace. Return the Maximum Speed to 2 m/s. (Figure 10)

Figure 10

Inherit Velocity

The Minimum and Maximum Angles define the angle the particles will come out of the emitter at. First, right click on the Gravity Controller in the Items menu and select Delete. (Figure 11)

Figure 11

Figure 12

*Note: Most values can be changed in one of three ways. 1. Manually enter the numeric value. 2. Highlight the item and drag your mouse in the preview window. 3. Slide the up and down slider bars next to the numeric entry box.

Clone PGROUP and name it PGROUP_2. (Figure 13) This now gives you two distinct groups of particles. They are being emitted from the same fountain, which may be desirable in certain circumstances, but for our purposes we need two emitters. So create a second emitter by right clicking on Controllers and selecting Fountain. Name it Fountain 2, and name the original Fountain 1. (Figure 13)

Figure 13- Naming Controllers helps to keep track of them.

Drop down the menu in each of the fountain emitters for Affected Particle Groups. For Fountain 1, leave PGROUP On and turn PGROUP_2 Off. For Fountain 2, turn PGROUP Off and leave PGROUP_2 On. (Figure 14)

Figure 14- Using combinations of Affected Particle Groups is an easy way to make complicated animations.

Move Fountain 2 away a bit from the first Fountain 1, leaving it positioned at 0,0,0. Change the Orientation of Fountain 2 to 0, 270, 0 to have it also pointing straight up.

Recreate the Gravity instance by right clicking on Controllers and choosing Gravity. The particles are now being affected by real Earth gravity. Adjust the strength to 2 m/s/s and you will see the particles go upward before coming down. Set the strength to 20, and the particles will be pulled downward much harder. Return the strength to 9.81 m/s/s.

Sometimes we don't want every particle group to be affected by every controller. Let's have Gravity only affect the particles in group 1. To do this, select the Affected Particle Groups menu and turn PGROUP_2 to Off. Now only PGROUP is being affected by Gravity. (Figure 15) Turn both PGROUPs back to On.

Figure 15

In the Gravity controller, turn Bounding shape On. You will see the some of the particles are no longer being affected by gravity. (Figure 16) Drop down the Bounding Shape menu to play with the settings. When finished, turn the Bounding Shape off.

Figure 16 - NOTE: The white glow does not appear in the LightWave window. It appears here for visual aid only.

Click on the second Camera in the list to view the simulation from below. Create a Collision instance by right clicking on Controllers and selecting Collision. The Collision sphere defaults to 0,0,0, so the first emitter positioned there will have red particles coming out of it. Particles by default turn red upon collision, but will not render this way. It is only a visual aid. Move the Collision sphere down to see the particles bounce off of it. (Figure 17)

Figure 17- To help you see the collision, particles will automatically turn red upon collision with an object.

Change the Collision sphere to a Box in the Shape Type selector (Figure 18) and change the orientation to 0,0,40.

Figure 18

The particles will begin sliding down the sides of the box. Set the Elasticity to 0. Now they are moving as if on glass. Return it to 50 and set the roughness to 100. Now they are bouncing and not sliding at all. Change Elasticity to 200%. The particles are now bouncing wildly off the box. Return the both values to 50. (Figure 19)

Figure 19

Set the Avoid Time to .5s and the Avoid Strength to 100N. You will see the particles try to avoid colliding with the box. Set the Stickiness to 100. This makes the particles stick to the collision object. Return the Avoid times to 1 and 1. Leave Stickiness set to 100.

Set the collision Shape Type to LWObject and load in an object. (Figure 20) You will see the particles sticking to the object wherever they hit it. Return Stickiness to 1 and you will see them bouncing off the object.

*Note: Your simulation time may slow down if you do not have an OpenGL card and at least 128mbs of memory. The more intensive your scene is, the slower it will simulate.

Figure 20

Remove Collision and Gravity and return your camera view to above. Zoom out so you are seeing the emitters and a large space above them. Go to Simulation under the Project menu (Figure 21) and change the Stop Time to 10s, extending your simulation to 10 seconds long.

Figure 21

Figure 22

In each Fountain Emitter, set the Birth Rate to 150 p/s. Go to each PGROUP and change the number of particles in the scene to 1500.

*Hint: The number of particles in the scene should be at least the Birth Rate multiplied by the Death Value. In this case, the Birth Rate of 150 multiplied by the Death Value of 10 gives us 1500, the number of particles in the scene. Without enough particles allowed in the scene, the emitters will stop emitting once that value is reached.

Add a Wind controller. You will see a yellow fan enter the scene, and your particles will begin blowing away from the camera. Change the Orientation to 0, 270, 0. The particles are now blowing upwards. Set the Swirl Strength to 5 and the Inward Strength to 10 (The particles in Fountain 1 are directly above the fan and will not swirl as hard). If you cannot see the entire effect, zoom out some more. The particles should be swirling in a tornado-like way. Experiment with the settings. (Figure 23)

Figure 23

To change the color of your particles over time, we need to add a Shader Controller. After creating the controller, click on the Edit Color button. (Figure 24)

Figure 24

Figure 25