Correct Way to use Particle Advection w. X-Particles

Please read, this will help X-Particles users for future projects.

In a previous post dated last week, I was trying to find a way to have Turbulence FD not affect all the X-Particles Emitters in the scene, similar to Explosia FX when dragging a modifier in the excluded list. Well as it turns out…you can do the exact same thing with Turbulence FD. I just never thought to do that, and this discovery was by accident.

In the old post, I said you had to cache the sim twice, one with particle velocity to 100 and one without-followed by a long string out process, but that’s not necessary, and you shouldn’t do that.

If you look at the screenshot below, the ball is the emitter source for Emitter A, Emitter B, and Turbulence FD. To have TFD only affect Emitter A, all I have to do is go to Emitter B, go to Modifiers, and drag the TFD container into the Modifier list, and uncheck it. And as you can see…Emitter B [the particles falling] is not being advected. This makes the workflow exactly like Explosia FX. Amazing, simple, and easy.

I hope this helps out other users in the future.


Side note for XP users: If you look at the screenshot, I have the TFD container in the Modifier List, that is because in the XP Object Settings, I have “Only Modifiers & Deformers in Same System” checked on. When I did this, the particles were no longer being advected, unless I place the TFD container it in the XP System Hierarchy. This is when I realize that X-Particles recognizes TFD as a Modifier…mind blown!

4 Likes

Great tip! Although I almost never use TFD for advection cause explosia can do that with more attributes supported + is not as heavy as TFD cached with velocity on.
But great tip, there is also a bug where TFD cannot emit per particle size, already reported it few months back, keep that in mind.
Thanks again great tip!

Have you used TurbulenceFD to advect Xparticles lately with current versions of each? I just can’t seem to get it to work, whatever I do. XP people didn’t have any suggestions, so I thought I’d try here. Thanks.

I’m trying to use TFD to advect my particles. I’m using Particle velocity scale on the TFD container set to 20%. I’ve tried values from 0-100%. Now my XP motion modifiers will not work. How can I blend it so I can use some advection from TFD container but also want some turbulence and gravity from my XP motion modifiers?

Thank you for your reports.
There is going to be a TFD update with an XP related fix this soon. It might resolve most or all of these effects. Let’s revisit those when the update is available.

Please try the new build 1481. It has a fix relating to XP integration.

Iot. advect particles from a TFD container, you’ll have to

  • Enable TFD Container/Container/Cache/Cache Velocity
  • Set TFD Container/Simulation/Velocity/Particle Velocity Scale more than 0%
  • Drag TFD Container to the list xpEmitter/Modifiers/Objects and
  • Enable TFD Container in this list (see below)
2 Likes

Yeah! Thanks for this! I’ve been having issues off-and-on, and will get this installed and try it asap!

Yes, tried it out – works like a charm. So nice to have this back after lots of head-scratching and frustration. Thanks.

Thank you! Just updated too! Great news for xp users

bumping this

any news on whether you can scale the power of the advection alongside XP motion modifiers?

for example, using XP constraints and XP attractor alongside TFD advection would be great - so far TFD advection seems to just switch off all XP modifiers

Does this happen with 1481? If so, could you please post a minimal scene that demonstrates the problem?
Thank you.

Hey Jascha - sorry for the late reply

i’ve attached a link to a demo scenefile. Just connect the caches up to the corresponding XP/TFD objects

You can see that even though particle velocity is turned down to 10%, the volume of the adaptive container seems to restrict any XP modifier influence

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10yvTv5A_D1gL2qCuwfJqApUVwQZfGVvM/view?usp=sharing