Learn the Essentials of Particle Flow

Learn the Essentials of Particle Flow

on May 11th 2010 with 15 comments
Tutorial Details

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

This entry is part 11 of 14 in the Evan Schaible Session
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In this Basix tutorial we will discuss in an informal manner everything you need to know about the essential operators and workflow within Particle Flow. We will learn what each setting does inside the basic operators, and create a small mortar explosion, precisely controlled with various methods, as well as completely procedural.

Video 1

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Note: click the ‘Monitor’ icon to view tutorial in full-screen HD.


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Evan Schaible is a fluids/particle artist and technical director from Los Angeles. Being currently unemployed, he is looking for full time staff work, as well as honing his own skills by doing freelance technical direction, visual effects, and occasionally even motion graphics and visualization. He runs a training website that can be found at: www.ParticleFlow.net, and his blog can be found at: www.evanschaible.com.  

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  • Wagha

    Man, show the final product, not the print screen of the Particle View window or the event or the operators.

    • http://www.evanschaible.com Evan Schaible

      If you would have watched the tutorial you would have seen that this isnt making an effect, but explaining the operators and how to use them. It is a technical tutorial, not an artistic one.

      • eladral

        Thanks for the tutorial, I’ve been looking for something like this for a while now.

  • 3dsuser

    Thanks for the basic info about the operators. Hope to see more in depth tutorials about this awesome feature.

  • Margret

    Dude, some of us live in very unfortunate countries where internet speed is not upto the mark, so till the first 3 minutes of your video, I kept waiting for something interesting and happening thing, but you kept harping” I have used very basic, I have shown very basic, I have used this, I have used that……blah blah”. Come on man, give us a break. If you can’t impress the audience in the first 30 seconds of your tutorial then your 30 minutes long tutorial is worthless. Even you didn’t show anything in the “Preview” file.

    And I have seen you always follow Allan Mckay’s way and alike tutorials. Man, we all have seen the tutorials already from that great guy, why don’t you come up with your own ideas?

    People, you can download far better tutorials from Allan Mckay’s site, free of cost obviously!
    http://vfxsolution.com/allanmckay/training/3ds-max-tutorials/

  • Mel576

    It is a little bit boring. Don’t talk too much, just act! Show us the result or something attractive! I quit rapidly when listening to such lessons.

  • http://www.creativecaptain.com/ Hugo

    Heey, looks a little bit like my tut about the particle army :). Great tut!

  • http://www.youtube.com/pavandon53xy Pavanrzx

    Nice…..Needed this….Thank you sooo Much…

    Please Do An Rookie level Too Like Dust,Smoke,Debris,Sparks,Etc…

    • bRUNO

      Since Allan Mckay hasn’t shown yet how to make dust,smoke and sparks so how our dear Evan can demonstrate you all these!
      Wait for Allan and then for Evan!
      :)

  • http://www.evanschaible.com Evan Schaible

    Allan does have some cool stuff on debri, im not sure which tutorial it is though. Pretty much he covers how to randomize it and make it look real. Its one of his DVDs I think.

    @Margret – Not sure who you are, or why you seem so mad at me… =/ But I dont copy people, and Allan and I teach the same because we both approach CG art from the technical side of it, therefore we can be a bit dry at times. I am also sorry that your country ruins your experience at CGtuts, but I am not sorry at all for adding a 3 minute introduction to a 30 minute video. If you formulated that opinion based on wathching 1/10th of the video, I think you may have jumped to some conclusions, or perhaps the video was just not meant for you. You may know more, and be better at particle work than I am, and thats cool. =)

  • thanvoki

    hi, as a beginer , needed this ..thanks

  • what

    Horibly boring!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!!! WIth the huge intereset over the topic can’t watch it to the final!!!!

    • usernuberone

      What do you want from a tutorial!? Twilight? is that what interests you?

  • Rogue Hydra

    Hey, I was having the same issue at the beginning as you when it wasn’t displaying the particles unless you upped the count – I found out that it’s the viewport setting. You have to set it to wireframe. It took me a while to catch this but then I finally switched out of the maximized perspective view and saw that a single particle emission was being displayed properly in all 3 other viewports. I just edited the settings and set it to ALL viewports and then changed settings in perspective one at a time till I found out it was just the view style.

    So, for anyone that was wondering why that was happening, there’s the reason and how to fix it.

  • Jarvis

    I don’t know what people expect of a tutorial on Particles, everyone wants to watch this exciting tutorial that shows them how to make a big explosion so that they can go around saying they can do particle effects, when in reality they just know how to make that one explosion, and probably can’t recreate it without the video. What tutorials are for is to give you the help so that you can start making your own Particles and maybe some day make your own tutorials. Besides Particles might look cool and shiny but like everyone has said, it is a very technical subject and not the most exciting, but you can still enjoy it.
    Thanks very much for this tutorial, it really helped me finally figure out Max’s Particle view, needed to figure this out before I have to write this one Art test. So greatly appreciated for this knowledge.