Filling objects with Glu3D particles

In this tutorial we explain how to fill polygonal objects with glu3D particles.
We take default glu3D bowl and fill it in two different ways with particles: manually and automatically.

FILLING TEST-BOWL MANUALLY

1. Push glu3D shelf button in the Shelf. glu3D Control Panel will appear. A bowl is created by default. A glu3D source is placed in Maya scene with a LOD of 50.
2. Select Sources tag in glu3D Control Panel. Edit sourceGlu`s radius to 0.9 (don't forget to push ENTER key after editing to make changes take effect). This accelerates the filling proccess.
3. Move sourceGlu to the top-center of the bowl, and rotate it to emit down in the vertical direction (Z or Y axis). You will notice that glu3D's Control Panel could disappear. If you want to make it appear again, select sourceGlu ( represented by a nurbsCircleNode) and push glu3D shelf button again.
4. Play scene (by pushing PLAY button in glu3D's Control panel ) and the source will start emitting particles and filling the bowl.
5. When you estimate it is enough ( for example at frame 50) , stop playing scene ( press STOP button in glu3D's Control Panel).
6. Edit sourceGlu's Speed (emission speed) to 0.0 in order to stop emitting.
7. Play scene again and let particles reach stable positions.
8. After filling the polygonal object, select gluEmitter node and make Attribute Editor appear. Go to Advanced Parameters section and push Make Now First Frame control button. This deletes previous calculations and set this stable situation the first frame of the animation.

   

This non-automatic method is not very fast. Particles stop moving after a high number of frames. You must wait around 300-500 frames to make this stable. We propose other alternative to fill objets automatically.

FILLING TEST- BOWL AUTOMATICALLY

1. Push glu3D shelf button in the Shelf. glu3D Control Panel will appear. A bowl is created by default and we will fill it with glu3D particles.
2. Select gluEmitter and make Attribute Editor appear. Go to Fill Objects section and select Fill Objects check-box. The Filling Percentage check-box will be activated with an initial default percentage (60%). Give a while to glu3D to fill the object with particles.
3. Play scene (you can also use PLAY button in glu3D's Control panel ) until frame 150 more or less or until you estimate glu3D particles are stabilized.
4. Go to Advanced Parameters section in Attribute Editor and push Make Now First Frame control button. This deletes previous calculations and set this stable situation the first frame of the animation.

   

There is an option in Advanced section of Attribute Editor that by default exclude hidden objects from calculations (and filling). If you want to fill only a certain number of objects, hide the rest of the polygonal objects from scene while glu3D is filling automatically. The same is applicable to dynamic calculations.

To preservate this particle positions even when RESTART button is pressed, you must select Preservate first frame particle positions check box. Otherwise, this stable initial positions will be erased if you restart calculations.