knowhow

Basic Know How for using the presets

What are TP Presets?

TP Presets are ready made setups for Thinking Particles.
They usually consist of a Null Object with several user data fields added and a XPresso tag that contains the core setup.
Thanks to the use rdata fields, the presets behave very much like other objects in CINEMA 4D. Thinking Particles usualy requires the user to have a fairly good knowledge of CINEMA 4D's node-based expression system, XPresso, as well as fundamental knowledge of math. This makes it difficult for many users who only seldomly use particle effects and don't have the time to make themselves familiar with all the neccesary prerequisits.
This set of presets will allow the setup of rather complex particle effects without having to touch XPresso or be an expert at mathmatics. The main advantage presets offer is that they allow working with TP without having to touch XPresso at all. This places the TP Presets right between the old particle system and a tailor-made TP setup. They combine the power of TP with the ease of use of standard particles.

A basic setup

To create particles with the presets you need the following scene elements:

Emitter Preset
An object to be used as a reference shape for the particles Exceptions: Multishape Emitter and Object Fragmentation
A Particle Geometry object

The shape will be assigned to the corresponding link field in the Emitter preset via drag & drop. The Particle Geometry object can be found under "Objects -> Thinking Particles". It is a generator object that creates the geometry for the particles. Without it, only the preview for particles will be visible and they won't be rendered.

Use of particle groups

Management
Particle groups are managed in the Thinking Particles Settings. Particle groups are ordered in a strict hierarchical manner. The base for all groups is the group All (Alle in german). The user can rename groups and create subgroups. Every particle group can have its own display settings. This makes it easy to distinguish grouips in the editor and to resolve errors in setups. If you use particle groups with a PPass or other nodes not only the assigned group will be used, but all of its subgroups as well.
Example:

All
-My first group
--My first subgroup
-My second group

Gravity that is applied to "My first group" will affect all particles in "My first group" as well as those in "My first subgroup". The particles in "My second group" will not be affected. This allows you to limit influence to specific particles.

There are three main uses for particle groups:

Separation of setups

Using groups you can create several completely independent TP setups in one scene.

Complex setups with group changes

In a complex setups it's more usefull to differentiate particles by sorting them into groups instead of conditions that continuously need to be evaluated. One use would be to place particles in a different group once they collide with an object; another option is to move particles that are used for spawning / fragmentation into a different group to prevent recursion.

Using separate particle geometries

You can assign particle groups to particle geometry objects. This is especialy useful if, for example, one group of particles should be displayed using Pyrocluster. For this to work you have to create two (or more, depending on setup) particle geometry objetcs and assign the different particle groups to them. Next, assign the Pyrocluster material to the particle geometry object that refers to the group you want to use PC with.

Example scenes

Particle groups come in handy when you need to differentiate between several kinds of particles.
A good example is when using particle collisions where you often want one set of particles to collide with another but not with other particles of the same set.
Particle groups can be managed in the TP Settings (Objects / Thinking Particles).
Example without groups Movie (QT)
In this example, each group's particles will repel each other as soon as they are emitted and will spread out, even though the emitter preset has a spread angle of "0".

Example with groups Movie (QT)
In this example, only the particles of different groups react to each other.

Groups are also very handy if you only want specific particles to be influenced by a force such as Gravity.

The preset TP Group Change allows you to change a particle's group, depending on several parameters. This allows you to define how particles should be influenced during the animation.
This examples shows how TP Group Change is used to first change particles from "Group1" to "Group2" when they are older than 40 frames, and a second time from "Group2" to "Group3" if they collide with a plane.
Example for group changes Movie (QT)

Back to Index