Digital Art Zone

Hi Everyone.This is my first post here in the Carrara forum. I have Carrara 7 Pro and I have hardly used it since I purchased it ages ago, so I am not very experienced with using the program.I would like to add animated sand and dust particles to a scene with DAZ Figures walking and running on a beach. I usually work in Poser but I also have DAZ Studio up to 4.5 .My question is can someone explain to me in simple terms how I could make the above particles linked to a sandy beach? For example a figure running along spraying sand about as they move along. Is it possible to make the animated particle and then export to Poser or DAZ Studio? Or have I got to make the whole scene in Carrara? Cheers

Wow, you don’t ask for much, do you? 

If you’ve never used the program before, it’s gonna take some work. I’m not even sure if your version has the same particle system as the latest, but I’ll give you a thumbnail sketch of what you’ll need to do.

First, animate your characters, figure out where their feets is going to be planted with each step. Then place a particle emitter there. I suppose you might be able to get away with just one and move it to the different locations, but anyway…

Then set it to eject spheres, and you’ll have to texture them to look like sand. Anyway, figure out what frames your feet are going to hit the ground, and set “Emitter on NOW” at that frame, and set it off a few frames later. Then set it to eject thousands of particles at a high rate, maybe 5 ft/sec or something. Set the emitter size to be maybe the size of a human foot.

Then place each emitter just at the surface, set them all to Die on Impact. Then run the sim, and then tweak as necessary. I’m probably forgetting something, so you’ll have to mess around a bit. 

You’ll also want to do some motion blur, either in Carrara (takes forever, not very good) or in After Effects or something else. If you don’t do motion blur it’ll look real bad.

Then you’re gonna have to set a deformer to deform the sand as each foot sinks down, but you can save that for later.

And here’s a quik ‘n crappy result using what I suggested, though I made it a bit over the top for illustration. Particles need to be smaller, and textured, and a bit less energetic, etc.

I used the Carrara motion blur, and it calculated (took forever) but the results don’t look real blurry, so I may have screwed something up somewhere. 

http://youtu.be/ijH3tAA9Jeo

Many thanks.I will give it a go.Cheers

And FWIW, here’s a slightly less quik, yet equally crappy version with the changes I suggested. About 10,000 particles per second, velocity is about 2 ft/sec, and particles are about .02 feet.

http://youtu.be/i9yVj1o4ySw

And the ultimate dishonor…

Youtube sez: “We detected your video may have bad lighting. Would you like us to fix it?”