Explosion Trail Problem

[JP Shep]

I'm having significant trouble trying to create a trail of explosions and after not getting any progress on my own I thought I'd consult the good people of ODForce

 

For reference, the effect I'm trying to achieve is in this link between 0:44 and 0:50.

 

https://youtu.be/zhBxfNm3rJE?t=43s

 

I've tried animating an emitter left to right but I could not figure out how to get it to pulse other than key the activation in the dopnet.

 

I've also tried using multiple emitters in the same dopnetwork and then keying their activation and scale source volume parameters in order to make it look like 

the fireball is exploding in a line instead of all at once.  

 

The latter sort of works but it still doesn't really give the effect I want.  In addition if I want to change the timing of the activation I have to go back, delete, and re-time all the keys again

and I feel like I've wasted a lot of time doing so.

 

I'm having a lot of problems and I haven't found anything useful online.

 

I've attached one of my older files because in my more recent once I went crazy with keying before realizing how inefficient it was.

 

I'm really trying to get better at houdini but I'm really struggling learning on my own.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

test_06.hipnc

[ashwinsareen_3009]

Hey , i suggest you use particles for it , or animated geometry or a combination . You can use temperature diffusion to transfer temperature and ignite fire in a sequence . 

I quickly tried a couple things to get a similar motion . I didn't have time to refine it much. I'm still learning myself . Check out the attached files . Hope you find some ideas from it . Let me know if you don't get any questions !

 

test_07.hipnc

test_08.hipnc

test_09.hipnc

[JP Shep]

Thanks a lot for replying!  I'll take a look tonight when I'm out of class.