Carrara Particle’s movie by Dimension Theory
Dimension Theory Carrara Particles scene files & forum thread more movies inside Everything About Carrara – Particles
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- fountain4
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- particle machine2
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- small scene light blob
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- small scene -working flow force2 FISH
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- small scene -working flow force2
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- Particle Tutorial Pt1
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- Particle Tutorial Pt2
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- Particle Tutorial Pt3
Carrara scene files – particles
- fountain4
- particle machine
- small scene light blob
- small scene -working flow force FISH
- small scene -working flow force2
- Particle test scene – user for experimenting with Carrara particles
Above are some of the Carrara scene files used to test particle setups for Particle Song
These may contain shaders not installed on your system, replace with your own in that case.
Carrara Particles – other training resources
Daz Forum Posts on Carrara Particles
Posted:18 Aug 2006 23:45
Okay, Someone should sticky this as it is from Antoine Clappier, a person responsible for a lot of Carrara in the earlier days. This was posted by him on Renderosity a few years ago and is all you want to know about shading particles. Of course, now particles can also be objects so the possibilites are endless:
Dear Dreamers,
It is definitely possible (and easy!) to shade particles in Carrara.
Each particle is seen by Carrara as an objects and therefore can have
any kind of shader applied (but you can not apply a different shader
to each particle).
How to apply a shader to a particle system:
1- Drag and Drop a Particle Object in the scene
2- Modify the settings to get the Particle effect you want
3- While your Particle Object is selected, go to the shader Room
4- Edit the shader as usual
As you can see there is no difference between an Object and a
Particle Object in Carrara.
Here is a few tricks, I have found:
A)- Put a picture on your particles:
say you want to create leaves:
1- Do the previous steps
2- In the shader: open the picture of a leaf in the Color Channel.
3- You are done !
Carrara will apply the picture to each particle not to the global
object. It is good to know that each particle has its own little UV
space.
B)- Change the shape of particles
You are not satisfied with the offered particle shapes. No problem do
your own particle shape !
1- Create your particle object as previously explained
2- Set the shape of the particles to Rectangle
3- In the Texture Room, create a Multi Channel Mixer, in Source 1 put
the shader you want, in Source 2 set all Channel to zero except
Transparency that should be at 100%, in the Blender put the shape of
the particle (other texture, image, …).
This technic refers to the extented tutorial that I have posted on
the list about “Boolean Textures” or Alpha Channel VS Transparency.
The good news is that I have included in Carrara 1.0 an example of
this technic. Go to the Browser Tray (left of the screen), select
Shaders, scroll: in the Complex Procedurals section, you will find a
Boolean Shader.
The Boolean Shader shows how to create holes in objects, ie to change
the shape of an object (or a particle in this example).
The thing to understand it that the Source 1 shader is the actual
shader of the object, Source 2 shader is the “hole” shader (or
transparent shader) and the Blender is where you define the shape.
Let say you want to create yellow star shape particles:
in Source 1, set color to yellow, leaves Source 2 as is (in fact
Source 2 should never be modified unless you want to create complex
special effects) and put in the mixer a grey levels image of a star
(created in a bitmap software).
C)Add motion blur to particles:
Very cool effect that can add a better speed feeling to your
particles.
1- Create whatever particle object with a the texture of your choice.
2- Create a Grey level image with a black to white gradient (the
gradient does not need to be linear: be creative !)
3- Edit the shader of the Particle Object, in Transparency Channel
load the previously created gradient. Rotate if needed the image.
D) Multiple shaders on Particle Object:
Impossible ? Nothing is impossible in Carrara !
Let say you want a more complex animation of leaves with different
leaf shapes and colors.
1- Create a first Particle Object, apply previously explained shading
technics.
2- Reduce the number of Particles
3- Duplicate the Particle Object, very slighly modify its settings.
4- Modify shading of the new Particle Object
5- Repeat step 3 to 4 several times.
You get a complex particle animation with various shapes and textures.
C) Very usefull trick:
There is one tricky problem when shading particle: at the beginning
of the animation most of the time you don’t see your particles. So
when you try to edit the shader you work blindly. A solution is to
change the time but when you modify the shader you create a bunch of
keyframes and end up with an animated shader (something you may not
want).
The trick is to stay at time equal zero, then go to the Texture Room
and switch the preview window to Flat Preview. This preview mode is
similar to one particle seen from the front.
D) The Mysterious Particle Shader !
If you go in the Texture Room, in the Channel Menu of any shader, you
will find the Mysterious shader under: “Natural Functions>Particle
Shader”.
This shader is extremely useful, its value is equal to the “life” of
a particle, ie zero when the particle is born and one when the
particle die (and a linear value between this two points). By itself
this function seems to be utterly uninteresting but if you apply this
shader to a Blender things get very interesting instead ! By using
the Particle Shader you have the possibility to “retrieve” the life
information of each single particle (which is different) and modify
the shader accordingly.
A very simple example: say you want to create the sparks you see
flying away from a wood fire. Usually these sparks start with a
bright yellow and end with dark red.
In Carrara, simply create the Particle Object, edit the shader: set
color to black, put a mixer in the Glow Channel with Color 1 set to
Yellow, Color 2 to Dark Red, and in the Blender the Particle Shader.
Each particle will go independently from yellow to red.
As this email gets too long, I will stop here! I hope this few tips
and tricks on Carrara’s particles will help you. By combining these
basic technics you can already create very intersting effects. The
next step is to combine the particles with outside effects such as
volumic primitives, Aura effet, … but that is another story.
Happy rendering to all,
Antoine Clappier
3dage Posted:25 Nov 2008 17:37
Particle collisions – help needed
ok, here’s a quick tut, but remember, I’m not done, or happy with what I’ve got so far.. but anyway.
The exploding wall is done by using a cube primitive for the wall, and a texture map plus a greyscale (B/W) image for the alpha which creates the hole.
make a new shader using the texture map, and the B/W alpha map.
Apply this to the wall.
Set the alpha map slider for the “image map” to 0% (no alpha)
In the sequencer, move the timeline to when you want the hole to appear,
In the shader change the alpha to 100%.
Back in the sequencer, change the tweener to discreet between the shader keys. this makes it a sharp change, from no hole to full hole.
Particles.
Create another cube for the flying brick and resize to suit.
Move it out of shot.
Create a fire primitive and resize it to fit around the brick.
Move the fire into the bricks hierarchy to attach the fire to the brick.
rename this new object as Firebrick (or whatever you want)
The fire can be animated over time to fade and change colour from the red yellow to black and grey.
create some fog and fire for the main explosion and keyframe the motion from behind the wall, through the hole and up.
change the colours of the fog and fire to burn, flare and finally fade to smoke.
Create another fire, this will be the explosive flames.
make it about the same size ans the fire we joined to the brick, but don’t just duplicate the first one.
move it our of shot.
Create a particle emitter and call it firebrick emitter (or whatever)
set this up to start emitting at the point in your animation when the hole appears.
Position the emitter at the front of the wall where the hole will appear.
Set the particle controls to emit objects and choose the firebrick as the particle.
Set the particle emitter controls to emit for about half a second.
and set the particles to collide with other scene objects. lower the bounce, bricks don’t really bounce much.
You’ll need to play with the velocity, mass, and angle of spread in the emitter controls, to get the effect you want. (lots of spot renders).
Save your work regularly
Create another particle emitter and call it explode, (or whatever)
In the particle controls set the emitter object as the fire, (the main fire, hiding behind the wall with the fog) and set the particle to be the smaller fire which we placed out of shot.
Set the start and end like we did for the firebricks.
(more spot renders) to check position and effect.
So now we have a wall which suddenly develops a hole as flames and bricks shoot out.
The exploding particle wall.
You could also create another brick without flames and add this into the main firebricks emitter.
That’s it for now.
particles from the bulbs?
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Carrara just has it’s own strange particles preview in the scene but actually it does work, yet when particles set to show lightmesh doesn’t show the replicated mesh.
