Moho Forum

I have created a particle layer to simulate a vortex effect, where particles start in the center of the screen and then spread out in 360 degrees. It's working, but how can I make the particles accelerate as they travel, to give the effect of travelling through a vortex? I tried putting a negative value in the Damping field, but it doesn't accept that.

use a low initial velocity and experiment with the acceleration rate...
OR
Manually animate one particle starting at it's origin with the velocity and acceleration you like.

Then put it in a particle layer with almost all settings with a 0 value besides the number of particles

Thanks. The first method won't work because that acceleration is about gravity, you have to pick a direction, and the more acceleration you select, the stronger the gravitational force, which effectively reduces the spread. What I need to for the particles to go out in 360 degrees and then accelerate in whatever direction they were originally set forth on. I will try your second method.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!An9E1CVuSl-zgo8NOzy ... A?e=OhAaa9

Have a look at this , might help

Thanks for that. I'm still not getting it. I've duplicated everything I'm seeing in yours, but it's still not behaving the same. A few questions:

1. How is the layer continuing to grow even though there is no keyframe after 50? I assume it has something to do with the transform keyframe in the particle layer, but I don't understand that. so...
2. ...What is the transform keyframe at 300 doing? When I created one nothing seemed to change
3. Why is the direction spread at 720? What's the point of it ever being any greater than 360?
4. In your previous post you said "Manually animate one particle starting at it's origin with the velocity and acceleration you like." I assume that's what you did, but how does one animate acceleration and velocity, exactly? Your particle isn't moving on its own.

I'm clearly missing some major ingredient somewhere.

Here's mine:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xctfi56m2o6wc ... .moho?dl=0

OH the main trick is that the particle's vector layer is actually animated in z depth.
Don't have time for the other questions tonight , sorry.

OK, I give up. I can't replicate what you have, and I can't figure out what's different. What is the secret sauced here? The example I'm linking here is from my actual project, with everything removed except the particle layer, so a few values are a little different, but in general everything looks to be the same. So frustrated!!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mjmkq0voit3ry ... .moho?dl=0

Hi, No secret sauce, bt it took a while to work out what you had done wrong
You had imported the file I gave you 17 seconds up the timeline or something like that.
This means that the z depth animation in the two particle vector layers was nowhere near the spawn' which is zero.

Even if the vortex does not become visible until much later and/or the spin applied to it is later, the actual particles must have their animation at the beginning of the timeline with a duration not less than the lifetime ( you can experiment with that).

Now you can make the vortex less deep by pushing the start depth up,nearer to zero or you can push the distance they pass further from camera by pushing the end key down, also closer to zero.
If you just want to change the appearance of overall size of the particles, change the vector's size or the layer's x,y scale.
Depth of the particles and particle group will also change the appearance of speed ( more than the particle velocity ( which does not work in z ( other than to change the particle variety of depth)
https://1drv.ms/u/s!An9E1CVuSl-zgo8Wf55 ... A?e=RjBIrx
THere are two particle systems here, the first has a base layer as source which stops particles 'hitting' the screen.

OK, I got it. Thanks so much for all your help. It's still 75% a mystery how it all works together, but I have something I'm reasonably happy with, and time to move on. What a hassle!