Emitters and Chunky Particles

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

I am trying to get a particle to come out of a weapon object in such a way that it always aligns with the weapon. No matter what I do, by combining weapons and chunky particle emitters, I can't get the particle to do anything but face north and inherit NO rotation from the parent object. It seems to only be able to inherit position and velocity. I've tried single and fountain, with every combination of inheritance in the 4 checkboxes in nwmax 0.8

 

Any ideas?

 

Also, is there a way to get a part on a weapon model to be transparent at the same time another part is shiny? No matter what I do, all parts are shiny. If you've done this, before, an example would be really great!

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Michael DarkAngel]

               

The Emitter Inherit properties in both NWMax and NWMax Plus are incorrect.  They should be radio buttons, not checkboxes.  Only one inherit is allowed, not all.  It was something Joco had tagged in the emitter script to be fixed in NWMax, but he never got around to it.  I started working on correcting it about a month ago, when I found that someone had reported it as being an issue (I haven't finished that fix yet).

 

I know this doesn't really help you, and at this moment I can't offer much more than suggesting you try hand-editing the inherit properties with a text editor.

 

Sorry

 

 MDA

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Well I'll play with that a bit and see what I get. I didn't watch the file as I was combining check boxes, but I did notice that if you mix inherit with others, you can make the others do things you don't expect. One combination actually gave me rotation on my particle, but the axis was the original position of the spawn point, using my distance from that point as the radius of the rotation. Not cool. Although, I have used that exact combination to create a shadow duplicate of a visual effect before, so I guess it does have use.

 

I'd like to refine and possibly complete both a TXI, and Aurora Emitter properties run-through, with images, or videos.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               

Can I make a plea for the tute to be a text and images affair rather than a video. I just find it easier to follow that way (Hey, I'm no longer a kitten you know!).

 

TR

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

ok, so just for my own clarification and future reference (at least), here are my findings using chunky particles with inherit values turned on/off

 

The following are with render type normal, using chunky particles,  and spawntype normal (0):

 

inherit (all) off: chunk faces north, stays where originally spawned

 

inherit_local on: chunk stays attached to object which spawned it, but only inherits relative xyz position, no rotation, which means it still faces north.

 

just inherit on: same as inherit_local

 

inheritvel on: chunk inherits initial velocity, which is 0 most times the engine starts allowing player interaction, so as with all inherit options turned off, chunk faces north and stays where it was originally spawned. Occasionally the particle is thrown at high velocity in the direction the spawn point is facing.

 

inherit_part on: same as inherit_local

 

inherit + inherit_local: part inherits local position, and rotates around the spawn point at a radius equal to the distance you are from the spawn position. While the spawn node moves in the z-axis, the particle also rotates around the original spawn position on the z axis. At no point does the facing of the particle change from north. If you walk forward, the distance the particle moves from the spawn point is forward, in whatever direction it is moving. If you walk backward (using backstep animation), the value is negative, so you can force the particle to return to the spawn point, with some error. Lets call this odd behavior 1.

 

inherit + inheritvel: same as inherit_local

 

inherit + inherit_part: same or similar to odd behavior 1

 

local + vel: same as inherit_local

 

local + part: part inherits the local position of the spawn point, and again gains no rotational values. However, as you walk, it gains a XY position bonus based on the distance from the original spawn point. If you walk in a positive direction, it goes forward faster. If you walk in a negative direction, it moves backward. Unlike the other odd behavior, this behavior is not dependent upon the facing of your character. Even after a lengthy battle, you can return to your spawn point and the particle will meet you there, without positional or rotational error. This could potentially be used as a very strange compass. Lets call this odd behavior 2.

 

vel + part: same as inherit_local

 

inherit + local + vel: may be exactly the same as odd behavior 1, but I can't tell if it is acting the same. When I back up, the part seems to stay in place, but as soon as I stop backing up, it sinks into the ground.

 

local + vel + part: seems to be the same as odd behavior 2.

 

Now I will go test some other render types.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

I can now confirm with great confidence that when chunky particles are turned on, changing render to anything at all does absolutely nothing. The render value is not even parsed, so the expected crash I should have gotten for setting it to linked, was not encountered.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

As Expected, changing spawn type to trail (1) also has no effect while update is set to single.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_MerricksDad]

               

Changing to a p2p gravity-based particle, I cannot set update to single or the engine crashes on startup. Using update of fountain shows no difference from the test above.

 

Surprisingly, moving the emitter from the weapon model to the weapon aurorabase has no effect on the test above.

 

 

 

In conclusion, the way they wrote particle rotation in chunky emitters is simply wrong. As far as I can see, there is absolutely no way to change the facing of the particle to match that of the original emitter. You can animate the chunky particle in its own mdl file, but you cannot access the traits of the parent object with any inheritance flags at all.