So I made a little snow globe and have a scene in mind where I would shake it and have the snow particles react to the movement.
I thought it would be simple. And I can do it a particle system but it is very taxing on my render times. Even on the viewport really.
I might be mistaken on this, but while researching how to achieve that with GeoNodes it seems the particle bit would be much much faster if I stayed away from regular particles?
I found several versions of snow falling with Geo Nodes, but I can't wrap my head around how to make it react to the movement. Honestly, as soon as a simulation zone gets added my brain overheats. The whole manipulation of time thing is mind twisting.
Finally, the questions I have are: is there a simpler solution that I'm failing to find? Is Geo Nodes indeed the best way to go about this? And do you have any suggestion on resources that might help me to the solution?
😂
It's been working well for me too... except when I hear that it might save me render time on thousands of particles. If it indeed saves me computing power it will inevitably save me thousands of dollars on upgrading the poor machine. Save on thousands of particles, save on thousands of dollars, save on sending anything to the landfill.
It might be worth trying... for the planet. Lol
Hm,
Maybe doing the complete Particles Course here on CGCookie, would get you 65% there, but it involves quite a bit of (not too difficult) math, is done in 2D and uses a static, 'square' collision Object. (It probably wouldn't even be faster than Blender's Particle System. Most certainly not in Render time!)) And I very much doubt that you'll be able to finish your project that way before this year's Christmas.
Blender's Particle System would work fine. Bake the simulation and your biggest problem would still be the Render time.
So, faking it?
Have you seen this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Lcwb7g3888 by Erindale?
That might help you get an idea. Maybe you can do the snowflakes as a Shader? That's what I would try, but I am not sure if it would work.
Uh.. that's good to know... so not necessarily a more efficient system? Say less...
Yeah, I watched this tutorial by Erindale, and I might still try to pull it with that system. Just gotta figure out if I can stack different simulation zones?
That's very clever! But it's also the reason why I went to bed with a headache yesterday Lol
Got it. That is good to know, also on the linking.
Thanks Martin! I might still bug you with questions as I try to figure this out. May or may not do it for this Christmas project, but as my husband would certainly tell you: I'm too stubborn to drop it 😂
So, it depends on how many collision objects you have and can you simplify it. I personally would render out the snow particles as a separate render/view layer. Use silhouette objects with holdout materials for objects inside the glass. If your objects don't have a lot of geometry then you can just put them into a collection and set the collection as a holdout. Also render in background mode. AKA command line rendering. You just have to use arguments while running blender. Note: it is case sensitive so -s (start frame) and -S (set scene) are different arguments.
-b runs background mode. Must be first switch.
{path}/{blend file name} tells blender what file to use.
-a render animation. Must be last switch
To run blender in Mac terminal:
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/advanced/command_line/launch/macos.html
Interesting! I might try it with the proxy objects. I definitely have way too much geometry for collision objects. And furry clothes. I might like to suffer 🤔
And good point! I have Blender Render Queue, so I always render in the BG, but with a more user friendly UI. I'll make sure to use it. Thanks for the tips Dwayne.
dillenbata3 It's an add-on. Very handy actually. Integral part of my workflow:
https://superhivemarket.com/products/blender-render-queue?search_id=44483350
It's Xmas. This problem is the Universe telling you to upgrade to a Threadripper™ PRO 9995WX with an RTX 5090 ;)
Lol! I wish I was smart to be able to handle anything but a Mac.
I can't stand an iPhone, but you say Explorer instead of Finder and my tech savyness goes out the Windows. Ba dum tsss (pun very much terrible, and very much intended).
Also, not sure my Santa is feeling very fancy this year... I asked for a CG Cookie Lifetime membership, not a better card. Maybe next year ;)
I'm a Mac man too but back in the day when I was designing Flash websites I went to an agency who were all on PC and I was forced to deal with it. It introduced me to some positives like a right button mouse and a scroll wheel. Honestly the PC isn't so bad - and it's got (a bit) better since Windows 10 - and it's the only way to go for 3D. iPhone and Macbook but ugly desktop PC at home for Blender and video editing.
