HurricaneTutorial 04
Particle Solidification in Blender: Cooling Lava
Pour a particle stream that holds together and sets like lava: PBD, Softbody Continuous Links, Sleep, HEL Emitter Zigzag and the Lava display preset.
In this tutorial we shoot a stream of particles from a plane, link them together so they behave like a thick, pasty flow and let them pile up on the floor, where they settle as a solid mass.
You will switch the emitter to the PBD solver, connect the particles with a Softbody constraint that keeps creating links and can also break, put the resting particles to sleep, swing the emitter with a HEL script and finish by colouring everything with the Lava preset, so the fresh material glows and darkens as it ages.
Step by step
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Click Start a New Simulation and, in Add Emitter, choose Plane. In Colliders, click the eye icon of
HurricaneFloorto hide the floor while you work. Move the plane up and tilt it so it points upwards at an angle, like a hose.In Particles → Solver, change Solver from DDR to PBD and lower Stiffness from 0.3 to 0.05. In Particles → Emitter → Velocity, set Multiplier to 10 and Axis to Z. Finally, in Simulation → Simulation Settings, raise Substeps Min | Max to 1 | 8. Play the simulation: the plane now fires an arc of particles.
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In Constraints, add a constraint: it appears as
Constraint_01with Constraint Type set to Softbody. Lower Max Links from 14 to 5.To see the links, go to Particles → Display, keep Type on Gradient and change Attribute from Velocity to Constraints. Back in the constraint, enable Continuous Links: the stream now travels as one connected ribbon. The video briefly tries Stiffness 0.3 and then goes back to 0.05.
To let the ribbon tear, set Breaking Type to Relative Distance and give Max Elongation Ratio a small value (about 0.1). Raise the display Size from 0.5 to 1 to see the particles better.
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In Simulation → Simulation Settings, raise Constraints Iterations from 1 to 7. In Particles → Emitter → Main Settings, lower Particles Radius to 0.8 and raise the Gap of Density | Gap from 1 to 2. Then fine-tune Max Elongation Ratio to 0.106. The stream now arcs over and piles up on the floor.
Next, in Particles → Solver → Sleep, click Enabled and lower Velocity Threshold from 0.1 to 0.010, with Debug State Visualization (Color) turned on. To see those debug colours, switch Particles → Display → Type from Gradient to Preview: the particles are now coloured by their Sleep state.
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In Particles → Emitter → Main Settings, change Frame Start | End from 1 | 100 to 1 | 400, and set the end of Frame Range (at the top of the panel) from 250 to 500. The emitter now generates about 88k particles instead of 22k. Switch Display → Type back to Gradient.
Then give the stream some movement: in HEL → Particles, add a script to Particle HEL Scripts and, in the HEL Script Manager, pick Emitter Zigzag (under Lifecycle & Destruction). In its Parameters, set Wave Speed to 0.3, Amplitude X to 0 and Amplitude Y to 5. The stream now sways from side to side as it pours onto the floor.
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In Particles → Display, click Load Preset and choose Lava (under Heat & Fire). The Attribute changes to Lifetime. Open the colour ramp's dropdown arrow (next to + and −) and click Flip Color Ramp, so the bright yellow is at the start: newly emitted particles glow and turn dark red as they age, and the pile on the floor looks like lava cooling down.
To control that transition, disable Auto Range and set Range (frames) to 0.89 – 91.96. Play the simulation to check the final result.
You now have a flow of linked particles that swings, piles up and sets on the floor with a lava look. Try other HEL scripts or display presets to adapt the same setup to other materials.