The following concept tutorial will be covering Surface Emitted Particles on SoftBody tenticles to create a spiraling array particle system for futuristic gun blasts or whatever.

Anatomy of Concept:

A central control object drives the vector and twist of the softbody goals.
Particles are emitted from the surface of the softbody objects.





Steps for Creation:

Create | Orient | Parent:

1 poly cube, slightly flattened (scale.y).
1 nurb cylinder with 20+ spans & scale.y to elongate it.
1 locator positioned at the top of the cylinder.
Parent the locator to the cylinder.
Duplicate the loc|cyl so one meets each face of the cube.




SoftBody | Springs:

Make each cylinder a softBody.
Duplicate, Make Copy Soft | Hide Non-Soft Object | Make Non-Soft a Goal
Select the particles of the new softBody and create Springs
Hide the Springs.




GoalPP Weights:

RMB select 75% of the particles starting from the bottom.
Using the Component Editor, Particles | goalPP , change the column to 0.000