Sparks with Particle Flow

In this tutorial we will be creating some sparks, kind of like you see from a welding torch.

As always, try to get as many reference images as you can before jumping in to a 3D project.

To start, we need to create an object that will be used as an emitter for the sparks. Depending on what you are needing the sparks for and the direction you want the sparks to take will determine what kind of object you will need.

For this I have created myself a slightly modified cylinder, with a 2.5 radius.

As this is a fairly advanced tutorial, I am not going to go into the creation of simple objects here, you should be able to do this by now on your own and I'm sure you can.

Once we have our emitter, we will need to create ourselves a particle flow source. There are a few ways to do this, first you should be able to hit 6 on your keyboard to bring up a blank particle flow window.

If hitting 6 does not work, the reason is most likely that the Keyboard Shortcut Override Toggle button is not turned on.

If that doesn't work you can always go to your Create Tab, and in the drop down menu under Geometry select Particle Systems from the list. Then Click on the button that says PF Source (PF=Particle Flow) and drag out the icon in your scene someplace. It does not matter where you put it.

Once you have the Particle Flow Source in your viewport, select it and go to the modify tab. If you hit 6 and it worked, then the window for Particle Flow should already be open. You will have a screen that looks like this.

If the window is not blank, don't worry. Just click and drag a selection box around what is in the light grey area and hit the delete key on your keyboard. Like below.

Once your window is nice and clear, we will add some things to it. Start by right clicking in the light grey area, and in the menu go to New -->Particle System--> and Empty Flow, like below.

A new box appears in the empty grey area on your screen and is labeled PF Source 01 (Depending on how many you have in the screen, the number will count up. Mine is at 02 because I already have one put together in my file that I am creating this tutorial via.

You will also see a little teapot icon named Render 0_ (Geometry)

At this point before moving on, we will change some settings for the entire event. Click in the grey title bar above, the dark grey title will become white to let you know you have it selected, then right click in the same area and in the menu go down to properties.

The Object Properties window will appear:

Go to the area in the bottom right hand corner of the window just above the OK button, and make sure to check the Motion Blur 'Enabled' box, and then check the' Object' Radial button. Then Click OK, to save the settings and close the window.

In the settings on the right hand side of the PFlow window, go down to Quantity Multiplier: In the Viewport setting, change this to 100% so we can see all the particles in our viewport window without having to render it first.

Also, it's a good habit to change the Particle Amount Upper Limit to a higher number so it doesn't automatically limit you on the number of particles you have in your view. I tend to just add all the zeroes it lets me to the default number.

Once you have changed these settings go back over to your Flow Chart area (the light grey area).

We are going to need to add some more things called" Operators" to our flow chart, these things can be dragged and dropped from the bottom pane in the window, the white area with the list of items underneath the flow chart display area.

We will start by adding A Shape Operator to the Flow. Click on and Drag out a Shape operator from the bottom pane, to the PF Source box in our Flow Chart, directly under Render 0_ (Geometry), a blue line will appear underneath it when it is ready for you to release the operator. Illustrated below:

The blue line that appears when it is ready to be dropped

The Shape 0_ (Cube 3D) will appear below the Render operator.

Click on the Shape operator to bring up the settings on the right.

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We will change the Drop Down where it says Cube, to Sphere 20-sides

The Size setting will depend on your scene of course, but for our purposes I have changed it to 0.4

That is all the settings we need to worry about here for now.

Next we will need to add a Birth event to our Flow Chart. This time, drag it from the operators pane, to the empty grey are in your flow chart area, directly below the PF Source box. Like this:

The result is a second box of operators is added to our flowchart, this one contains the Birth Operator, and a Display operator.

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We are going to need to connect the top PF Source box, with our bottom Event box, by dragging the dangling blue dot from under the top box, to the empty circle on top of the second box and then let go. A dotted line should connect the two like above.

Now these two Source and Event are linked and one will follow in our particle system after the other and carry it through to the end.

First, select the Birth operator, and we'll adjust those settings on the right side of the window.

Change the Emit Start and Stop to 0 - 100 so the particles are emitted through the entire scene.

Then change the Amount to 100, we can always increase or decrease this as necessary for your animations.

We'll get to changing the display in a few minutes, since it automatically adds it when creating a Birth operator we are going to have to add some more operators between it and the Birth operator.

From the operators list below, drag and drop a "Position Object" operator to our Event 0_ box just between the Birth, and the display. Like this:

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If you did it correctly, the Position Object 0_ (None) will show up between Birth and Display in our Event 0_ box. ^^

Next lets adjust our settings for the Position Object operator. Select it so the settings display on the right.

In the Emitter Objects: area, click on Add or By List and select the object your created in the beginning to add it to the PFlow as the new emitter for your particles.

In my case I named my modified cylinder particlestart, and it now shows up in the list of Emitter Objects:

You can add multiple objects to this list if you wish your particles to emit from more than 1 object.

Just this one for our purposes now.

That is all for Position Object settings.

Next we'll drag a Speed By Surface operator out and drop it between the Position Object, and the Display operators just like we did before.

Let's work on the settings for this operator now over to the right.

Here is where we adjust the speed of our particles, we are doing so by telling it to speed up (from the surface) of our object and out to a specified distance.

Make sure the settings match with the above image like so

Set the drop down to Set Speed Once

Speed to 144.0

Variation 0.16 we want very little difference in the speed of our particles

In the Surface Geometry: Add your Cylindrical object that we used as our emitter the same way we did before.

Down a bit to where it says Direction: now

Set the drop down to Surface Normals - So it sends out particles based on the way our polygons are facing

and the Divergence to 30.0. This one is a biggy, this tells our sparks to emit in different directions from the surface of our object instead of in a straight line.

That is all for the Speed settings!

Next we are going to need to add something to our seen that will make our particles arc over the way the sparks in our reference image do. We will create a gravity space warp to accomplish this. So minimize your PFlow window and return to your viewports.

Once there, go to the create tab again, and then over to the right until you see the Space Warps button, and then select Gravity from the menu.

Then, drag out a Gravity Space Warp icon in your TOP viewport.

When you have done this you should see the icon in your scene, and you can position it wherever you like, as long as the arrow is pointing downwards toward your spark emitter, like this:

Then make sure you have the gravity icon selected and go to your modifier tab to adjust its settings.

Next, make sure your new Delete is selected and go over to the right to adjust its settings.

Again, make sure By Particle Age is marked, and change Life Span and Variation to 10.

Next drag and drop a "Material Dynamic" operator in between our new Delete and the new Display.