Hi. I've been having problems getting my head round all the particle sprites and I need to know how you can make clouds (Using Particles) and how you can shape them into figures ( for example: a letter).

Any help would be very much appreciated!

Thanks

Use cloud images as sprites, with a long lifespan. Then the emitter can either be shaped like the letter or figure, or the emitter can trace the letter ala skywriting.

If you do not want to move the clouds once they are formed here is an easy example using the smoke material on the cd



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V13 beta project file



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Ok thanks very much. I'll look in to it as soon as possible.

John,

I am trying to fill up a sphere, (normals pointing inward), with sprites and call it a cloud. But the cloud doesn't render completely transparent - in fact if it is rendered without multipass then the splines are visible (see attached images below). I noticed this in a v13beta render of the plane flying through clouds project you created awhile back but the quicktime movie on your website doesn't show these artifact. Have you figured out how to get completely transparent containters for the sprites? Thanks!

mine are not contained but are on the outside just change velocity to small number on a transparent model..normals pointing out

I still get the cloud object showing up even though it is transparent. I found a few other posts about this problem. It looks like a particle with transparency interferes with a transparent object. The best workaround to using sprite clouds then is to sputter off some cloud sprites and then move the cloud object out of view. But then the cloud motion can't be controlled. That is why a cloud with normals pointing inward full of sprites would have so much potential - because the cloud can be shaped in time, blow away, etc. I guess I will make a small project that illustrates my probelm, post it here and send it to hash reports.