Particle Systems

[Anonymous]

Hi!

I've just been mucking around with particle effects and I've come into a couple of problems..

When I'm using the 'Rate' emitter, if I start increasing the rate value it just fires of particles in short bursts with a gap in between.. is this the expected behaviour?

I was also mucking around with the mesh visualiser but I get a material error, saying single materials are not yet supported?

I'm not sure if this is possible or not but it would be very cool if the emitter could emit light such as that on the ue4 emitter, can create some really dynamic effects. Also, is there support for emitting meshes? Are the particles emitted by stingray GPU particles?

Cheers,

Kaine

P.S Dan if you're reading this, some spacelike particle explosions/effect tutorials or samples would be awesome! Just not so subtly throwing the idea out there... heh.

Edit: I just tested the burst emitter, and if I increase the number of particles in a burst, I don't get anywhere near the amount set

Edit 2: If the particles have an emissive property, when viewing them from certain angles, they lose all of emission, this also happens with materials that have emissive properties on meshes.. Sometimes I only have to change viewing angle by a few degrees and it goes from blinding me on the screen to being completely matte.

[dan.matlack]

Can you share your particle with me so I can have a look?

[paul.kind]

The rate emitter problem is likely because you have your rate set very high, but your max allowed particles very low.  Try clicking your particle systems root to see if you have the max number set low and if so, try turning it up.

Your second question I will have to test and will get back to you by tonight/tomorrow with (hopefully) an answer.

Your third question gets a yes, you can do lit particles.  You enble it using Materials > Materials:Billboard > Lit Particles (checkbox)

Your fourth question (spawning mesh particles) I do not believe is an option yet.  I will look into this and see what I can find out for you.

Hope this helps!

P

HreFor 380

[paul.kind]

Heya,

Ok, for the burst issue, lease check your max allowed particles.  I am pretty sure that is the root of your problem.  If you have it set to say 100 particles and you tell the burst rate to be 1000 you will only get 100.

Paul

I think your max allowed particles 155

[Anonymous]

Hey!

Awesome, that fixed my problems. Didn't think to check there for extra settings.

Last few questions now..

Do you know if the particles are handled by the GPU? Or are they CPU and I need to be a bit careful in using them?

Are the particles lit dynamically by the environment?

I imported a .png and a .tga with alpha and applied it as my diffuse texture, however they display with a white background, what do I need to do to get alpha working?

Cheers,

Kaine

[dan.matlack]

Paul has made an intro to particles video that we will post up quicly. Particles can get expensive if you overdo it, so watch out for that! For your alph, you can just make the background of the diffuse black and then use additive blend, see gif below.

[Anonymous]

Awesome 🙂 in that case can I suggest GPU based particle emitters? I'm sure the team has/is already looking at it, but the engines using them can spawn insane amounts of particles with very little performance loss.. My game is going to be pretty particle intense so I'm a bit worried..

[dan.matlack]

here is the particle introduction video:

[paul.kind]

If you have any questions, feel free to post them here or on the YouTube page. Make sure to "like" it if you do in fact like it.

835

[Anonymous]

Hey Paul,

Nice tutorial! 🙂 A nice follow up which would be really interesting would be an advanced particle tutorial where you could perhaps talk about some of the other features in-depth, one I'm very interested in is vector fields and collisions! Just an idea. Anyway, keep the tutorials coming!

Cheers,

Kaine