Rain Effect

I decided pretty early on into animating my story that I wanted to add in an effect that I've never done before.

After a bit of research I decided that animating rain would look good and also lend itself to the sadness and despair of the toy soldier when it finds itself to be discarded.
The rain would collide with models and splash into multiple droplets.


To make the rain I started with a plane above the scene. In the particle view I added a birth event to the plane and set the number and duration of particles.
I then made a gravity force and added this in the particle view.
I also made a number of Udeflectors and added them to a collide event in the particle view.
This was the rain particles created.

I linked this collide event to a new birth event in the particle view and added another gravity and collide event, referenceing the gravity and deflectors in my scene.
I then added a delete event to time out the particles after a few seconds.
This was the splash drops created.

Finally I added a shape and scale event to each of the birth events. These were tweaked to form rain drops and splash drops.
I also added a water material to the source of my particle events.


I repeated this process in my first three scenes. In my third scene I reduced the particle count and duration to make it look like the raid had stopped.

I am very happy with the rain I added and really feels like it makes the animation more realistic. I also feel like you feel more sympathy for the toy soldier.
The only problem I encountered was the amout of computer memory was taken up while including and testing this water.