Particle effect - snow or rain

Studio
#1

I’m trying to get some sort particle effect eg. a rain or snowfall effect to appear over a tracked image, but not sure of the best way to achieve that in studio!

Most of the time I’ve been animating in blender with bone/ armature animation and moving that over to Studio as a .pod file/ UV map just fine. However after experimenting with particle emitters in blender, I had trouble working out how to get that over to Studio…

I’m probably over complicating things massively, but has anyone had any experience with making a snowfall effect in/ for Studio? (Either 2D or 3D!)

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#2

Hi Sophie,

We actually have a template for a particle effect made by our team that was posted in this similar topic - Help in particle

The general idea for those looking to build their own from scratch is to generate a large number of Symbols - containing leaves, snow, etc - and have each one play through its own falling animation at a random speed. Billboarding, in this case, allows a 2D object to resemble a 3D object, so may be useful if access to 3D objects is limited.

An interesting technique is to add a degree of randomisation to the falling destination, which can be achieved fairly simply by reparenting the snowball object from an origin group to a destination group using a timeline transition (modifying properties relativeTo and relativeToProp on the snowball object) and repositioning the destination group very slightly in code.

Thanks,
Mark

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#3

Hi Mark,

Thanks for this! I think I stumbled across the particle effect post just before creating this post myself. The method you state sounds like it could work really well - I might have a look into that - the main snag is now my actual technical ability to pull that off… Are there any resources you know of which could help take anyone (me) through that?

In the meantime, I’m currently trying out a far less subtle route which uses your Alpha video technique with a green screened snow effect.

#4

Hi Sophie,

The zpp project in that topic covers the implementation I mentioned above so you can download that, import it into studio and have a play around with it :slight_smile:

Thanks,
Mark

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#5

Dear Mark
I love these. I am trying to create some snow. Would I be able to use this particle effect for that?

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#6

Perhaps a simple idea would be to do the effect with several layers (perhaps 3 or four) of looping video textures , all with transparency except for the falling snow. I would put these on planes set at different depths along the Z-axis (or in the direction you wanted your user to look). Let’s call them Snow1 through Snow4.

Because Snow 1 if further forward than Snow 2, it would create the illusion that the snow is falling behind it. The same with Snow 3 and Snow 4 behind them.

This is a very old technique from videogames and, come to think of it, from theatre. Might give you a cool effect.

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#7

With particles, just for the fun and because it’s nearly Christmas :grin:
snow

Here it’s the ZPP:
snow.zpp (400.6 KB)

Enjoy! :christmas_tree:

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Trouble importing Fbx from maya into zapworks
#8

Thank you ;-). I have done my little card now. I only saw this now Jean so I will download it . :wink:

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#9

This is amazing Jean. I love it. Thanks again

1 Like