Attached Link: http://www.eovia.com/carrara/product_tour/prod_tour_animation.jsp

Hi all, I have posted about this before and I'm still alittle frustrated because i can't seem to figure out how to make particles behave. I know there is no particle collision with objects (the manual still has the misprint), only the floor, but there has to be a way to "fake it" with physics and some of the forces (ie. set up a heavy duty anti-directional force on the surface of an object so when the particles are aimed at that object and move towards it, they will appear to bounce off and not go through). I have read the manual and played around alot. From what I can tell particle emmitters are one of the things that physics can't effect. The funny thing is that on the Eovia site, they show this picture in the product tour section(http://www.eovia.com/carrara/product_tour/prod_tour_animation.jsp) double click on the Particle screen shot...it certainly seems like physics does effect particles. Any help would be greatly appreciated

Particles have there own physics that can be controlled via the particle editor. Perhaps if you can share what you are attempting to create we can help you out. Brian

Nicholas86, Thaks for thereply. I think I understand the physics panels of the particles but for now I just want to simulate (fake) particles hitting a ball or cube and reacting (bouncing off). If I can accomplish this, then I can hopefully extrapolate to other things. The key is I don't want it to be static. If it were to be static it is not as much of a problem becuase I could change the floor position, but with an animation, it's not the same. Here's a screen shot. Also the Effects and Surface fidelity are set to HIGH and the directional force strength is set to 1000.

Ok. What you are trying to do won't easily be accomplished. Lots of tweaking and it could be done with particles, but particles have no interaction with other objects, besides the ground plane. The physics properties you are looking at are to do with the particle emitter it will bounce off other objects etc. but not the particles. I believe CS4 is going to address animation issues like this, thats what they've said on the list anyway. You could simulate an effect like this with physics and numerous objects. Brian

You might consider using two particle emitters, the second providing the 'bounce' from your sphere or whatever and starting up at the point in your timeline when the first hits. It would take some fiddling to get the effect you want but might do the trick. Mark

Thank you all for the help. I'll try some of these ideas.