Anyone care to help illuminate me on how these suckers REALLY work?
Oh, I can copy/paste with the best of them... but I can not seem to get a single emitter to make a single, long stream of particles.
What I wish to accomplish is a true fountain, one that sends a vertical stream straight up. However, every single fountain that I can find in a tile, is a mish-mash of 'sprays' of water that get wider and wider... that is all well and good for the END of the stream, but I need a single, sorta thick, stream, a real stream of water. Like what comes out of a water hose....
Emitters?
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Bannor Bloodfist
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Chandigar
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I'll try and get more detailed info tonight, but take a look at the fountain, broken fountain and broken hydrant placeables out of suburbia. It took a *lot* of trial and error but got some narrower streams. If you want a very narrow stream of water shooting up, you have to increase exit velocity (affects how fast it emits), mass (effects how gravity affects it), and spray angle (affects the random angle applied vs vertical).
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Christopher
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Chandigar
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Chandigar's Emitter Mini-Guide
Took a bit of extra time to retry a lot of the settings and and test some that I was unsure of. Anyway... to begin:
General notes:
==============
The emitter is simply this: A node that shoots a flat square plane out in one particular direction with one particular texture on it.
Also note that mobile emitters are possible if you animate the emitter itself. The emitter doesn't seem to move (or appears to be moving so quickly that you only see the middle of the animation) if its linked to an object which is then animated.
STYLES
======
The first section is Update. This part appears to set up the general format of the emitter. The only usable one appears to be Fountain and it shoots a continuous stream of particles. The rest are unknown and don't seem to do anything with a loop. Leave this section set on "fountain"
The second section is Render. Its unknown what this section does. Leave it set on "Normal"
Third section is Blend. Not sure what that does, leave it set to "lighten".
Fourth Section is SPawn Type. I believe this lets you set your particles to leave a trail as they move. Experiment with this to see if it has the effect you want in your emitter.
PARAMETERS
==========
The first section is display. This sets the icon size in MAX. I don't believe it does anything else in game.
The second section is Emitter Size. This area is relatively important since it sets the area from which the emissions can occur. For example, x-size 0 and y-size 0 means that all particles emit from the same spot. Larger sizes will have the particle randomly spawn from different areas of the emitter. For example, if you want to have a steam room, you can have one emitter pointing up with the size set to the size of the tile, then steam will randomly appear in the room. If you have it pointing down, you can do rain. PS, do NOT judge the emission area by the icon size, use the numbers. The icon is deceptive.
The third section is Inherit Properties. Not sure what this section does, default is "inherit"
The fourth section is Misellaneous. Not sure what these do either. Default is render order 1, rest 0.0.
PARTICLES *THIS PART IS IMPORTANT!*
===================================
The first section is "Start and End". This section lets you configure the start and end size transparency and color of the particle. For example, you can set a water particle to start green and end red as well as grow or shrink in size. I'm not sure what "size Y" does.
The following settings heavily interact with each other. I'll have some general notes at the end.
- Birthrate sets how fast the particles spawn. IE one per section or 20 per second.
- Life expectancy is how long the particles will live before they vanish.
- Mass is how "heavy" the object is. Mass 0.0 objects will be unaffected by gravity and will shoot out in a straight line. Mass 0.3 objects will gently arc towards the ground.
- Spread (in degrees) is the random direction that the particle will shoot out from with 0 being straight forward. A spread of 25 will mean particles will emit randomly at approximately a 25 degree arc from center (based on observation, may not actually be true degrees)
- Particle rotation. This is how much rotation each individual particle has as it emits.
- Velocity is the speed at which the particle leaves the emitter.
- Random velocity is the amount of randomness thats applied to each particle. For example, a velocity of 2 and a random velocity of 0.5 will mean that particles emit with velocities of between 1.5 and 2.5
- Bounce coefficient. I believe this involves bouncing when the particle hits something else but I haven't tested this.
- Blur length. Not sure, sounds like the length of the blur effect of the particle. Not really tested.
The four check boxes have additional effects, these were not tested but they appear to be pretty straightforward. PS I tried "affected by wind" with fire before and the effect was very unpredictable. I had a sheet of horizontal fire shooting across the tile. The effect of this probably is modified by the settings above.
The settings above interact with each other and allow different combinations of things to achieve the same result. For example, if you have an emitter that emits particles at 1 per second that travels for 10', doubling the velocity will cause the particle to travel for 20' but the stream will be 1/2 as dense. On the other hand, doubling the life expectancy will also cause the stream to travel for 20' but it will be at full density. Therefore it reasons that by doubling the birthrate and doubling the velocity you can get the same result as doubling the life expectancy with respects to general particle density and duration except that each individual particle is moving twice as fast.
TEXTURE AND CHUNK
=================
The first section is Texture and this is where you select the texture file to use. Pretty straightforward.
The second section is Animation. This section tells the engine how to render animated texture files. For example, if you view the flame texture it has one file with a series of flame pictures on it. Lets say theres a grid of 3x3 flames. You set the grid width and height in the animation section as well as the speed and the particle will cycle through all 9 flame images, creating an animation. This also lets you do custom animated particles.
The third section is chunk, no clue what that is.
ADVANCED
========
I haven't played with this section much at all, but you probably won't need to use it.
Hope this mini-guide helps!
General notes:
==============
The emitter is simply this: A node that shoots a flat square plane out in one particular direction with one particular texture on it.
Also note that mobile emitters are possible if you animate the emitter itself. The emitter doesn't seem to move (or appears to be moving so quickly that you only see the middle of the animation) if its linked to an object which is then animated.
STYLES
======
The first section is Update. This part appears to set up the general format of the emitter. The only usable one appears to be Fountain and it shoots a continuous stream of particles. The rest are unknown and don't seem to do anything with a loop. Leave this section set on "fountain"
The second section is Render. Its unknown what this section does. Leave it set on "Normal"
Third section is Blend. Not sure what that does, leave it set to "lighten".
Fourth Section is SPawn Type. I believe this lets you set your particles to leave a trail as they move. Experiment with this to see if it has the effect you want in your emitter.
PARAMETERS
==========
The first section is display. This sets the icon size in MAX. I don't believe it does anything else in game.
The second section is Emitter Size. This area is relatively important since it sets the area from which the emissions can occur. For example, x-size 0 and y-size 0 means that all particles emit from the same spot. Larger sizes will have the particle randomly spawn from different areas of the emitter. For example, if you want to have a steam room, you can have one emitter pointing up with the size set to the size of the tile, then steam will randomly appear in the room. If you have it pointing down, you can do rain. PS, do NOT judge the emission area by the icon size, use the numbers. The icon is deceptive.
The third section is Inherit Properties. Not sure what this section does, default is "inherit"
The fourth section is Misellaneous. Not sure what these do either. Default is render order 1, rest 0.0.
PARTICLES *THIS PART IS IMPORTANT!*
===================================
The first section is "Start and End". This section lets you configure the start and end size transparency and color of the particle. For example, you can set a water particle to start green and end red as well as grow or shrink in size. I'm not sure what "size Y" does.
The following settings heavily interact with each other. I'll have some general notes at the end.
- Birthrate sets how fast the particles spawn. IE one per section or 20 per second.
- Life expectancy is how long the particles will live before they vanish.
- Mass is how "heavy" the object is. Mass 0.0 objects will be unaffected by gravity and will shoot out in a straight line. Mass 0.3 objects will gently arc towards the ground.
- Spread (in degrees) is the random direction that the particle will shoot out from with 0 being straight forward. A spread of 25 will mean particles will emit randomly at approximately a 25 degree arc from center (based on observation, may not actually be true degrees)
- Particle rotation. This is how much rotation each individual particle has as it emits.
- Velocity is the speed at which the particle leaves the emitter.
- Random velocity is the amount of randomness thats applied to each particle. For example, a velocity of 2 and a random velocity of 0.5 will mean that particles emit with velocities of between 1.5 and 2.5
- Bounce coefficient. I believe this involves bouncing when the particle hits something else but I haven't tested this.
- Blur length. Not sure, sounds like the length of the blur effect of the particle. Not really tested.
The four check boxes have additional effects, these were not tested but they appear to be pretty straightforward. PS I tried "affected by wind" with fire before and the effect was very unpredictable. I had a sheet of horizontal fire shooting across the tile. The effect of this probably is modified by the settings above.
The settings above interact with each other and allow different combinations of things to achieve the same result. For example, if you have an emitter that emits particles at 1 per second that travels for 10', doubling the velocity will cause the particle to travel for 20' but the stream will be 1/2 as dense. On the other hand, doubling the life expectancy will also cause the stream to travel for 20' but it will be at full density. Therefore it reasons that by doubling the birthrate and doubling the velocity you can get the same result as doubling the life expectancy with respects to general particle density and duration except that each individual particle is moving twice as fast.
TEXTURE AND CHUNK
=================
The first section is Texture and this is where you select the texture file to use. Pretty straightforward.
The second section is Animation. This section tells the engine how to render animated texture files. For example, if you view the flame texture it has one file with a series of flame pictures on it. Lets say theres a grid of 3x3 flames. You set the grid width and height in the animation section as well as the speed and the particle will cycle through all 9 flame images, creating an animation. This also lets you do custom animated particles.
The third section is chunk, no clue what that is.
ADVANCED
========
I haven't played with this section much at all, but you probably won't need to use it.
Hope this mini-guide helps!
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Chandigar
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Oh yea, for the hose streaming water, you may not get the exact effect you're looking for because the texture thats used for water is inherently "broad", it looks like a bunch of specs so doesn't replicate a "stream" very well. You can still get something similar by reducing the size of the particle (try size 0.1) and spread 0. Then adjust the life expectancy, birth rate and velocity to get the right "arc". You can also put a random velocity so there's a bit of drop-off at the end of the arc. Note, if you set the life expectancy too high, you'll see the water travelling for a long time under the plane of the ground so you want to set life expectancy so it dies just as the particle goes off screen.
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Izk The Mad
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I have to laugh, because it took me all of about 5 minutes to figure the emitters out in WordPad. After studying the other nodes they were associated with, I successfully copied the emitters and their dummy node parent over to another horse mdl. Next I have to figure out the colors. I want to do an Aurenthil, and I need to convert this to a golden yellow, I think:
Red/orange eyes:
colorStart 1.0 0.211765 0.0
colorEnd 1.0 0.235294 0.0
Thought I'd post it here. Possibly hoping someone else will give me a tip, before I get to it. :rolleyes:
Red/orange eyes:
colorStart 1.0 0.211765 0.0
colorEnd 1.0 0.235294 0.0
Thought I'd post it here. Possibly hoping someone else will give me a tip, before I get to it. :rolleyes:
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Michael DarkAngel
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I believe those numbers represent the RGB values in a 0.0 to 1.0 variety instead of the more familiar 0 to 255 we all know and love.Izk The Mad wrote:I have to laugh, because it took me all of about 5 minutes to figure the emitters out in WordPad. After studying the other nodes they were associated with, I successfully copied the emitters and their dummy node parent over to another horse mdl. Next I have to figure out the colors. I want to do an Aurenthil, and I need to convert this to a golden yellow, I think:
Red/orange eyes:
colorStart 1.0 0.211765 0.0
colorEnd 1.0 0.235294 0.0
Thought I'd post it here. Possibly hoping someone else will give me a tip, before I get to it. :rolleyes:
Multiplying those values by 255 would provide us with:
colorStart 255 54 0 -- an orange-red color
colorEnd 255 60 0 -- an orange red color with a bit more orange
HTH
MDA
TBotR
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Izk The Mad
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I see the gremlins are moving my posts again. I should take the hint. Maybe my questions would get more answers if I didn't hide them in a middle of a short novel. :p
And that tip worked beautifully. I was able to change the eye color by using the color values in Photoshop, then dividing them by 255. :thumb: Thanks, Michael!
And that tip worked beautifully. I was able to change the eye color by using the color values in Photoshop, then dividing them by 255. :thumb: Thanks, Michael!