Hey All
I'm curious about the Particle system on iClone, I still need to play with it and explore it but I would like to ask some users who already have lots of experience with it:

I wonder how dynamic it it, I mean beside of the presets that came with iClone.
Is it possible to animate the particles as I want using the timeline?

For example:
Let's say a big object fall from the sky and when as it hits the ground I want to design my very own original wave shock of dust or smoke... how much control do I have to do this and if it's possible is it easy or hard to accomplish on the current iClone version 6 ?

I didn't found many video tutorials on the particles, but only general using the presets so it's not that helpful for what I'm trying to learn and use in different situations, the more dynamic it is the better for original ideas to do with particles in iClone.

Feel free to share your experience with me and if you know of a good video tutorial about it (not just the basics and presets) I'll be happy to watch and learn.

Thanks ahead!

Does it mean that... the current particle system is not so dynamic and I can't create my "particle" ideas by myself in iClone?  or maybe I didn't understand very well... if that's the case sorry about it.

I don't have a lot of experience with it, but it does seem a bit "awkward" especially if you are trying to do something as detailed as you are trying to.
I ended up using Hitfilm which has a superb particle system and has great tutorials. My gut feeling is that the Particle system in iClone is in need of an overhaul, but this could be just lack of experience with it.

Thanks guys!
Sorry for my weird questions... I'm coming from other software and iClone is still very new to me.
The all Real-Time thing is very exciting and I'm still experimenting things in order to accomplish things, almost everytime I trying stuff I'm learning something new and it's really cool.

I'm guessing that iClone will get better and better with Character Creator and Particle System from your answers so it's very cool, hope to see some more options in these areas to give me as a creator more freedom instead of just using presets or limited content.


I'll keep on experimenting, and will dig in HitFilm because it is a really user-friendly software from my tiny experience with it.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hi Alon Dan,
There is some scope for using Hard Body Physics to get some effects.

You can give a sphere a texture which will make parts of it invisible (so that it might have some resemblance to a puff of smoke or whatever, rather than a sphere) and you can switch visibility of objects on or off along the timeline.

When hard-body objects are massed together and a physics simulation is run, they explode apart.  With work, you could build a vehicle out of mangled, post-explosion parts, make these parts hard-body, cluster them together and make them invisible.  You could have a car in a scene and make it look like it has been blown into mangled bits.  The original car would be made invisible at some point during the explosion.

Here is an Iclone5 video I put together to show the effect of hard-body physics objects 'exploding'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=587CP1iuo4Q   

Thanks Grimhilda!
It's not what I'm looking for but still thanks to your video tutorial I'm exposed to more ideas of doing other stuff, very useful thank you for sharing this I appreciate it.

An instant reply!

The video was just put together from a few of my own test renders as I read into things.  I didn't get round to trying anything complex such as an exploding car but I think there are explosions for sale in the marketplace where debris falls to the ground afterwards.

Anyway, I'm glad if it helps you a little and appreciate you letting me know.

Going further off-topic...

I think the visible/invisible property of objects can be used a lot.  Now, I haven't tried it myself but if I wanted to show a giant underground worm moving fast underground and breaking up a concrete yard, then I'd do it with invisible models of the broken slabs moving up and becoming visible in the scene.  I think someone already did this - or at least a cracked road - so my idea is probably derived from that.

The shock-wave you spoke about could perhaps be done a little bit along those lines.  Concentric circles of the ground could rise and sink momentarily, one after the other, with objects on the ground swaying and tilting a little.

With some basic modelling and texturing, a lot of individual things can created and used within Iclone.  Some people build amazing things just with the basic props supplied.  But you've used other 3d software, so you probably don't need to be told all that (especially from me - don't be fooled by 'Tutor' next to my name)! 

This sound like something I would like to try to do also, but it's still complicated for me.
The idea of animating invisible objects on the timeline sounds interesting I should try it... 
I wonder if there will be easier way to do such thing in the future like import animated .obj  (sequence animated) or something even better like animate such thing inside iClone... 

About the particles, the reason I asked about it is to do it inside iClone with it's current tools without using any 3rd party software, because I want it to be realtime so I can tweak and animate it as I wish and re-use it like anything else in iClone, but I guess it is not yet very dynamic to accomplish "anything" still I will have to try it myself, I'm still looking for more video tutorials about Creating my own particles inside iClone (without presets).

Sorry I can't be of any use with particles but you referred to animated objects.  So...

You can create animated objects in other software and bring them into Iclone via 3DXchange where the animation shows up as a 'Perform' command on the 'right-click' menu.

The objects need to be meshes with bones and need to be exported with animation as .FBX files.  Size transformations of parts of the object (morphs) don't come across to iclone.
(I once tried exporting an animation made of primitives which were made into a parent-child hierarchy but in the original software these primitives each had a rotation point set by me.  The conversion of the whole to .FBX messed this up).

My other software is Carrara, which I use to place bones into meshes before animating.  One test I made was of a hemisphere that had a set of bones like a 'parasol'.  The hemisphere was animated to swell up to look like an opening mushroom.  On a much larger scale, I guess it could be done with a terrain previously exported as an object.

I don't recommend my poor-quality video (which I've shown before) but if you want to see the so-called mushroom, it's around the 3:45 mark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPtVqcziRRI