So in the middle of my scene, I have this mesh that’s set up to kill particles that collide with it. But then I realised that that’s not exactly what I wanted, and I wanted a different set of particles to simply deflect off it. Is it possible to have meshes acting selectively against different particle emitters? I have a snide feeling that it probably isn’t possible.
Can anyone think of a way to even cheat that? I can’t, except of hand animating the larger particles by hand, which, although isn’t as head-numbing, would be something I wouldn’t be looking forward to doing.
Use two particle systems and two meshes. Divide your particle count between them.
Place each particle system on it’s own layer.
One system will be used for killing particles, the other for deflection.
By placing them on two different layers the particles are only affected by forces and collision objects that reside on that layer.
Sorry, yeah, about that. I forgot to mention that the particle are boids, and I want the two systems to interact with each other. Boids don’t interact with particles on different layer, right? Or is my behaviour configs just too awful for me to notice?
It does seem to actually work. Here is an example file of two particle systems. Cubes on layer 5 and Spheres on layer 6. The Cone eats Cube particles on layer 5 and the Sphere blocks magenta particles particles on layer 6. The Cubes can move through the Sphere and the magenta partciles are not eaten by the Cone.
The Boid Brain can see through the layers and the boids still attack one another.
