xpTurbulence

xpTurbulence applies turbulence to particle movement.

Object Properties

Untitled

Object tab menu for xpTurbulence.

Enabled

Checking this box activates xpTurbulence.

Animation to demonstrate the effect of enabling the xpTurbulence modifier.

Mode

Set at Independent, by default.

You can change this to Action-Controlled.

Independent Mode

In this mode, particles will be affected if they come into the field of effect of the modifier.

Action-Controlled Mode

When in the Action-Controlled Mode setting, the modifier will only act on a particle when told to do so by an action.

Noise Type

Set as Standard, by default.

The other options are: Turbulence, Wavy Turbulence, Curl, FBM and Simplex (Perlin) Noise.

Standard

This gives the same turbulence effect as the standard Cinema 4D modifier.

Animation to demonstrate the Noise Type set as Standard.

Turbulence/Wavy Turbulence/FBM

These add different types of turbulence to the particle stream.

Generally, Wavy Turbulence gives a smoother effect, but this and Turbulence are fairly similar.

The Noise Type is set as Turbulence in this animation.

Here, the Noise Type is set as Wavy Turbulence.

FBM (fractal Brownian motion) produces a more irregular, chaotic movement, especially at lower scale and higher octaves.

In this animation, the Noise Type is FBM.

Curl

Selecting Curl will open up the following additional Curl parameters.

This animation shows the Noise Type of Curl.

Offset

This setting offsets the noise field used by Curl.

Blend

Gives a blend between the particle’s velocity and the Curl velocity.

Add

This is the percentage of the Curl velocity to add to the particle’s velocity.

Sources Distance

This setting controls the Curl noise field distance from the sources.

Sources

Drop Curl noise sources into this list (these can be geometry, other particles, particle groups or an emitter).

Boundaries Distance

This is a falloff from the distance over which the velocity field of the Curl is affected (squashed to reduce the velocity along the normal to the surface).

Drag

The Drag setting slows the velocity field around the surface (tangential).

Boundaries

Drag geometry objects (primitives or polygons only) into this list to act as boundaries that ‘squash’ the Curl velocity field (it becomes tangential to the surfaces).

Simplex (Perlin) Noise

This is an advanced version of the original Perlin noise and will add the following two parameters.

Type

This is the simplex noise type.

You can choose between Raw, which is the original Perlin noise, or MultiOctave (the default), which is more advanced and can produce better results.

Demonstration of the Type setting of Raw.

Animation to show the alternative Type setting of MultiOctave.

Persistence

Only used in the MultiOctave noise.

The higher the value, the more of each octave is added into the noise, giving a smoother result.

Turbulence Active on Axis

By default the turbulence effect works on all three axes.

You can choose which axes the effect should work on by ticking or unticking the X-axis, Y-axis and Z-axis boxes.

Scale

In Standard mode this has the same effect as in the standard Cinema 4D turbulence modifier.

In the other modes, larger scales tend to damp down the movement of the particle, giving smoother movement.

By contrast, a smaller scale will produce more chaotic movement.

Frequency

Only available in Standard and Curl modes, this changes the frequency of the internal noise generator used by the modifier, so the higher the value, the more rapidly the noise changes.

Octaves

This parameter influences the frequency of the turbulence.

It is not available for the Standard turbulence mode.

A value of 0 (zero) will result in no change in direction; larger values will result in more frequent and dramatic changes.

Strength

The higher the strength value, the greater the effect, the greater the change in particle velocity (speed and direction).

Periodic Variation

Only available in Turbulence noise type.

When enabled, the turbulence will repeat itself over a period of time.

The time taken to repeat is controlled by the Repeat Interval parameter.

Repeat Interval

If Periodic Variation is enabled, you can select how often the noise repeats with the Repeat Interval drop-down (Turbulence Noise Type only).

The smaller the number, the shorter the time between repeats.

Groups Affected tab

Groups

To specify the group, drag and drop the desired Group object into this field.

This setting is useful if you want to ensure that the spawned particles are, or are not, affected by xpTurbulence.

Mapping tab

The modifier’s settings can be mapped to particle data.

Use the dedicated manual page, below, for instructions on how this works.

Data Mapping

Fields tab

You can use the Fields options to control where xpTurbulence operates.