Hai,
first of all, thanks for looking at this thread. Im new to particle systems (never really worked with one before to be honest, so I basically have very little experience with the blender particle system), however, I need to create a very specific and elaboarte particle animation for a project of mine.
First of all, let me explain how its supposed to look like (visualization below):
“We have a pool full of thousands of particles (lets say cubes), in which the particles move like a sea, as in, having waves and stuff. Then, the particles slowly flow together forming sort of a pillar reaching outside the pool, towards the edge of the pool, moving in sort of an arc. At the end, the particles flow together into a humanoid shape, until the entire pool is empty.”
Thats the gist of it. Ive actually visualized it in a crude way in this imgur album, this should clear things up, be sure to look at it: http://imgur.com/a/sfuss
Alright, I hope that gives an idea of what I want to achieve.
Now, Im not expecting you guys to give me a full run-through of how to do this (even though I wouldnt complain if you did, haha), but I would like to ask you for pointers.
Such as:
What features of the particle system would be responsible for making each step/effect of this particle animation happen?
Can you link me to tutorials that cover topics that will help me in creating this animation?
Do you know of any other projects here on Blenderartist that deal with similar issues? Can you link me to them?
One last thing: The animation also needs to be able to be exported as an OBJ sequence, for which I plan on using the particle instance modifier. Is that even possible with a particle animation of such complexity?
Any help, tips and pointers with this would be greatly appreciated! I look forward to your responses and thanks for reading!