Tutorial: Making a rain effect - feeblemind

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Tutorial: Making a rain effect

By olivS, vendredi 24 dcembre 2004 09:38 :: Blender tutorials :: #4 :: rss :: PDF Simulating rain for still images or for animation is a frequent topic from beginners. This tutorial will try to show a simple way for getting good looking results.

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Tutorial: Making a rain effect - feeblemind

Simulate rain using particles

For Blender: 2.48a - French version available

Fichier(s) attach(s) :
q

Makerain.blend.zip

We will make use of particles, in order to carry out this simulation. At first, we will need a particles emitter object, placed at the top of the scene, hovering like a cloud. For example, a plane slightly banked (or not) will be fine, as it is not necessary to see it subdivided.

The other objects in our example scene: a ground (just a plan) and the main focus of the scene (a simple cube), would be obstacles for the particles (at least), and reactors for the particles (ideally), because they would

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Tutorial: Making a rain effect - feeblemind

interact with the rain drops. You can also make sure that you will have at hand a very last object as the rain drop of your simulation.

Normals of the objects: the normals of the cloud should be orientated toward the ground, those of the ground orientated toward the cloud, and those of the cube should radiate outside of it. This will ease the management of the direction the particles will be emitted. Location of the objects on the layers: to insure correct interaction, make sure that the emitters and reactors (or any object which would collide with the particles) belong to the same layers. Name of the objects: they will be of importance, later, so please name your object a decent way.

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Tutorial: Making a rain effect - feeblemind

The particles emitter

Select the particles emitter (here, this is our object named

Cloud) and in the Object F7 menu, in the Particle PSys is

Buttons, click on the Add New button from the Particle System panel. A new particle system named

then attached to the emitter. Make sure this a Emitter system type. The other parameters of the panel could be set like this:

Amount:

5000 (enough to provide a dense rain)

Emit from, Random (to make sure that the water falls are not too regular nor artificial) Emit from, Faces Emit from, Even (for a proportional distribution of the drops, if the emitter is built from many faces with uneven dimensions) Emit from, Jittered (for a random distribution of the drops emitted by a single face)

In the Physics panel, we should mainly set the influence of the emitter's normal (especially if it is banking, in order to simulate rain drops submitted to wind), and to set the direction of the gravity.

Newtonian Initial velocity, Normal: Global effects, AccZ:

10.000 (or any high value that leads to good visual effects)

-9.81 (in order to stay close to the earth gravity)

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Tutorial: Making a rain effect - feeblemind

Finally, in the Visualization panel, select

Object, and in the OB: field, type the name of the water drop

object. In the Extras panel, activate the Effectors, Die on hit button.

The reactor particles

Basically, all the objects that could be hit by any rain drop should be considered as a reactor. You will select them one after the other, and apply the same kind of settings to each of them. In the Object

F7 menu, in the Physics Buttons and the Collision tab, activate the Collision and Kill buttons.

As an option, specify some value for the Damping and Friction parameters, but this is not really necessary there.

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Tutorial: Making a rain effect - feeblemind

In the Particle Buttons, add a new system using the Add New button from the Particle System tab. Select Reactor as the system type, and set the other parameters as follow:

Amount: 5000 (in order to generate enough particles to react to the rain drops) Life:

5.0 (the droplets will have a very short span life...) 0.5 (... that could vary a lot from time to time)

Rand:

Emit from, Particle (so that the system will react to particles...) Target, Target, them)

OB: Cloud (...emitted by the target emitter Cloud) Psys 1 (and we specify the number id of the particle system in case the emitter has many of

In the Physics panel, specify a Global effects, AccZ positive value, for example

10.00. Because you would like

to see the reactor object showing on the render, do not forget to activate the Render, Emitter button in the Visualization panel.
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Tutorial: Making a rain effect - feeblemind

As a final step, in the Children tab, we will enable the spawning, at each collision, of a cluster of particles instead of just one. Please set the panels parameters like this:

Particles and Nothing Amount: Round:

3 (in order to spawn 3 child droplets by parent droplet emitted during the collision)

1.000 (to obtain a circular distribution of the particles)

You can know play the animation

Ctrl+A or use the Bake button from the Bake tab in the Particle Buttons.

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Tutorial: Making a rain effect - feeblemind

Obviously, before rendering your animation, remember to set materials for your rain drops, especially the droplets emitted by the reactors. Those ones should stay discreet in order to remain realist.

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Tutorial: Making a rain effect - feeblemind

Article written on December the 24th, 2004. Updated on November the 16th, 2008 for Blender 2.48a. Comments re-initialized

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Comments
1. On dimanche 28 dcembre 2008 20:04, by Denny

hey i tried this but i dont see any drops, also, when i click BAKE, it says 'no image found to bake to'. please
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Tutorial: Making a rain effect - feeblemind

help?

Rponse de olivS le samedi 3 janvier 2009 14:58

You don't use the good Bake button: you actually are refering to the one in the Scene F10 buttons... Please try the one hidden in the Bake tab of the Particle Buttons...

2. On jeudi 1 janvier 2009 14:44, by CoffeeGrunt

Same here, I'm using version 2.48 by the way...

3. On samedi 3 janvier 2009 13:28, by dhldhldhl

What the heck, the rain is going upwards :S, do you know what could be wrong??

Rponse de olivS le samedi 3 janvier 2009 14:56

Sure! Flip the normal! 4. On jeudi 15 janvier 2009 06:35, by Aamir

I was tryin to make it till I got to the part where you're in the 'particle system' tab making the reactor. I typed in the target as 'Cloud' and I checked the name of the object too, but it wouldn't accept the value (just erased it)

5. On jeudi 15 janvier 2009 07:16, by X-man

Hi, all. Nice site...I really like your site ! Good job man.2

6. On jeudi 15 janvier 2009 14:40, by Bob

The site\'\'s very professional! Keep up the good work! Oh yes, one extra comment - maybe you could add more pictures too! So, good luck to your team!

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Tutorial: Making a rain effect - feeblemind

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Setting a prey-predator relationship using Boids particles How to solve Blender's smoothing problems Vector Blur usage with Blender Tutorial: Simple animations Tutorial: using texture stencils Tutorial: Ambient Occlusion Soft shadows and Area lights Tutorial: transparency Tutorial: reflections Tutorial: Making a rain effect Tutorial: Material indice

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