Massive Emitter birth rate for relatively few particles?

[icegiantnewtek]

Hi there.
This is a kind of general question about Particles / voxels. I have used them a few times with mixed results. I seem to have to put in an enormous 'Birth Rate' of 200000 particles to get only a couple of hundred particles to appear on my object. I’m using them mainly to make a spritzing effect of water droplets on a bottle or can. I’m not trying to animate them yet, just for a single hi resolution render for print work. They look great when they’re there but it’s just that there are so few of them. Also, is there a way of stopping the particles bunching up in areas of the object that have a high poly count? Can they be spread out evenly over the object?
The user manual has got me so far but need some more guidance. I’ve looked through various websites to try to track down an idiots guide to particles or set of basic rules to stick by when setting them up but can’t find any. I know they’re pretty complex and I’m only touching the surface but I get the feeling that I‘m not using them correctly and getting into bad habits already.

Anyway, hope this makes sense. Any help would be great.

Thanks.

Icegiant.

[-NG-]

look at the life time of the particles and the particle limit tab. If your birthrate is set to 2000 and your limit is 1000, the emitter will only generate 1000 particles.

The birthrate is just how many particles per(designated unit)it generates.

[Tiger]

Set Particle Limit to 200.000, that should help.
Here I have 20.000 particles flying off. 200.000 was a little to much to handle for my pc

Edit: Set Lifetime to 0 and they will live forever! Also, you can have a object as a emitter-Nozzle-Object something...try it out!

[icegiantnewtek]

Thanks a million guys!

It was my Particle Life Time that was the fix.
Changing it gave me the results I was looking for, setting it to zero gave me loads.
I had 187 particles, now I have 20,000!

Thanks again for the time, it’s really appreciated.


Icegiant.

[Tiger]

Nice waterdropps there

[SplineGod]

I would probably avoid using particles for something like this and use textures to control the generation of HVs on the surface.