spurt.axp
It's been awhile since I've made a volcano-type-effect with spurt, but here
goes:
1. Make a cone with 16 sides and 6 segments. (I'm assuming
that you're using r3.)
2. Divide up the cone into 16 vertical columns, with 6 points per
column (there are a few different ways to do this… I'd
probably make 16 cones and then delete everything but one
column from each cone. it'd be easy with fence mode
vertex selection)
3. create a box from the top view
4. copy the box for each of the divided cone/columns
5. attach each of those columns of points to a separate box to make
valid boxed objects
6. if you've got 16 columns/boxed objects and want 2000 total particles
in the explosion, use 100 particles per spurting object
7. if you've got 6 points in each column/emitter, use 100/6 particles
per point.
Set to radial particle flow, with chaos fairly high, along with fairly
high initial velocity.
8. now, if you want a single explosion, the lifespan ought to be however
long it takes a particle to get to the ground (probably longer than
the 30 frames you're currently using). Lifespan length will determine
whether or not new particles are created before your animation finishes.
If you want that to happen faster, you can turn decceleration up,
so the particles slow down faster and fall sooner.
(for explosions, you usually want high initial velocity and
high decceleration)
My feeling for why your particles are curving only slightly and not reaching
the ground is because with a lifespan of only 30, your decceleration and
initial velocity aren't high enough to get them down to the ground.
Have fun and experiment!
– G
PS: which version of spurt are you using?