The default behavior for particles that hit a Static Object is to bounce off. If you want them to react in another way, you can use the POP Collision Detect.

Tip

If you are colliding particles with a Grid, turn off Use Volume Based Collision Detection on the Static Object node.

The POP Limit is very similar to the Collision POP, but instead of detecting collisions with geometry, it detects particles "colliding" with an imaginary boundary within a cube in 3d space. This is useful to automatically cull or bounce particles that fly too far.

The POP Soft Limit is like the Limit POP, but gives softer bounces. It slows particles down when they hit the boundary, giving a less jerky response than a limit or collision.

Tip

You can use a POP Property node to add randomization to the Mass and Bounce so that particles don’t all bounce to the same height.

Using Collision Detect

  1. Create a particle system along the curve using the Location or Source shelf tools.

  2. Create an object for the particle system to collide with.

  3. Click the Collision Detect tool on the Particles tab.

  4. Select the object for collision detection and press Enter.

    For specific parameter help, see the Collision Detect node help. You can choose what happens to the particles once they hit using the options on the Behavior tab.

    Note

    Turn on Move to Hit if you want to trigger an effect from a particle’s collision. For example, if you want to birth more particles, you want the particle at the hit location, not where it ended up at the end of the frame. This will move the particle back to it’s hit location.

    In the following example, particles that hit the box are sticking to it and are colored red.

Note

Standard POP collision modes support the hittotal attribute that tracks the cumulative number of hits. See the Attributes page for a full list of Collision attributes.

Particles in Dynamics

Getting started

Behavior

Next Steps

Reference