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I have created some sparks by following this video tutorial.

However, I would now like to create a smooth looping animation.

I have already altered the start frame for the particle emitter to a decent sized -ve (approx. 80 from memory) so that I'm not starting on frame 1 with zero/minimal particles.

I suspect that some way of seeding the random number will be involved, but I am at a loss how to do that and whatever else would be needed.

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  • $\begingroup$ I would recommend a longer bake time, or cutting to a different shot, instead of trying to line up all the particles so it loops. $\endgroup$
    – CharlesL
    Apr 19, 2014 at 1:10
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    $\begingroup$ Maybe keyed particles can help? $\endgroup$
    – gandalf3 ♦
    Apr 19, 2014 at 1:26

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Faking a Looping Particle System

One possibility is to have your particle system use many particles moving very quickly, render it, and then cut off the beginning of the rendered animation in a video editing app. Here is an example:

enter image description here

In this short looping video clip, the starting position of the particles does not match the ending position, so it's not a perfect loop, but by having lots of particles moving quickly, the viewer is much less likely to notice this break in the continuity.

Then again, my computer is very slow, so it's possible the poor quality of playback I get hides the break in continuity -- maybe on a faster computer, it'd be too obvious, I don't know.

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