Raytrace Particles

[Paul_Newman]

I have a mesh of the word "SIZZLER" and the idea is to have 'sizzling' particles streaming off the sides of this extruded word. On top of this, the word moves inside a reflective tunnel, and the 'sizzling' must be seen in the reflections too, ideally with glow effects on the actual particles and glows seen in the reflections.

Anybody got an idea how to pull this off?

I currently have a mesh of the word "SIZZLER" with and emitter specified under Object Properties : Geometry : Add Custom Object : FX Emitter with the Generator Nozzle type set to Object Normal. I then used FX Linker to link a simple mesh object to each particle so that they are visible in the reflections. Trouble is that the total number of particles emitted are 17,600 and I can't get Lightwave to introduce that vast amount of objects for linking. At any one time there are 500 particles 'alive' and I hoped that I would be able to merely create 500 copies for linking, but it seems I was wrong (or just ignorant?).

I currently have no access to commercial 3rd party plug-ins, so I must use Lighwave 'as-is' or else employ a free plug-in.

Can anyone help?

Thanks in advance,

Paul

[Lightwolf]

Hi Paul,
you'll have to use hypervoxels for the raytracing to work. You'll probably get away with sprites (and you could even paint your own particles and use those).
Cheers,
Mike

[Mylenium]

I'd try the following:

Render everything from a frontal/ top down perspective with a camera with large focal distance (a fake orthogonal camera). Then take your image sequence and project it back onto your scene with a spotlight. It may be tricky to match the sizes but this will give you a good reflection (sort of). The limitation is quite obvious - it will only work from certain camera angles. Another idea might be splitting up your emitter into separate letters and then do multiple particle renderings and comp them together. The only way to make your Glow visible in reflection ist to use Hypervoxels (a small volume sphere representing the glowball). Reflections with HVs will however dramatically slow down your rendering. Using a filter like Corona on the final image with Luminosity as input will be easier but may be difficult to control depending on how bright your scene is.

Mylenium

[Paul_Newman]

Hyper Voxel Sprites sound like a possible solution to reflected glows.

How do I get HV particles to emit from an object surface? Should I use the FX Linker? If so, can I do it for a total 17,600 particles through my sequence?

Thanks for the help so far,

Paul

[Lightwolf]

Open HV and select the particle emitter as your HV object. Done.
Mind you, HV has a limit (don't ask me why) of around 32 000 particles.
Cheers,
Mike

[Paul_Newman]

Thanks Lightwolf!

As you can see, the initial results are not really 'sizzling' but with a bit of tweaking . . .

Paul

[toby]

a very easy way to get that many particles in the scene is to use an object made only of points. In modeler create a ball (or whatever shape you want ) then hit "k" to kill the polygons, hit "points to polys" so the points will render, use morphs or displacement to move them around - and it won't slow down your display as much as emitters.

[Paul_Newman]

Thanks to all who helped. The render was done by this morning with the Athlon 2000+ cutting through the Hypervoxels with relative ease (although I know this is not the most taxing HV setup one can throw at a machine).

Let's hope the client likes what he sees . . .

Thanks again guys.

Paul