How to confine particles to a shape

[Dirk De jong]

There is a collision detection behavior but it is limited to allowing you to define up to 6 planes (4 walls and a floor and ceiling) – so with that you can do a cube but not a sphere (see this motion project file) ;
12057_particlecube.motn.zip

There are attractor / repeller behaviors and with that you might be able to try to simulate particles bouncing in a sphere ?… (see this motion file)
12059_particlesphere.motn.zip

[Lorenzo m. Vidali]

Thanks! This is definitely helpful.

I’ve also had some luck applying the edge collision behavior and then the sphere filter to the parent group, but I’m still figuring out how to control the location of the sphere as it is still dictated by the movement of the particles rather than them being confined.

[Lorenzo m. Vidali]

So quick update, I applied a sphere filter to the emitter on the project with the cube dimensions and it worked beautifully!

In addition, I applied a motion path behavior to the emitter and mapped it to a spinning circle with slightly smaller dimensions than the sphere. It looks great!

[Dirk De jong]

nice, I like the idea of adding the Sphere filter to the 3D cube – the sphere filter is not really 3D in the same sense that the cube is, but it mostly works to maintain the illusion…