Looking for a blowing snow emitter

[Legacy_Oseryn]

               

I've been searching for a placeable that would add a blowing snow effect to parts of an area and can find nothing even remotely related to what I envision. I have some winter regions and want to see snow blowing across the road as the player trudges down the road. I found a small jpg that looks similar to what I am looking for. Has anyone stumbled across anything like this for NWN?

 

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Oseryn]

               

Well I'm guessing no one knows, of anything like this already made, so I took a stab at it myself. I'm not a 3-d modeler, and know next to nothing about emitters, but even a teeny bit of knowledge can be dangerous and I managed to work something up that was close to what I wanted ... but not quite.

 

The main issue I can't resolve is how to get the particles to NOT scatter off a player, when they walk through the blowing snow. Right now, when the player is standing still, it all looks fine, but as soon as they move, the emitter particles scatter off the player at all sorts of crazy, random angles. It looks pretty awful - certainly not a natural look. I don't have Bounce checked as true.

 

The second thing I'm trying to do is get the particles to move sideways, back and forth, very subtlety - like maybe 2 degrees to either side off straight ahead. Not a fast movement either, but a small, random, slow back and forth sideways movement.

 

If anyone has any tips, I'd greatly appreciate them. I've read though this page:http://ccg.animecafe...=Aurora_Emitter and that was really helpful and got me started, but I'm stumped at this point. Here's the a FRAPS video showing the particles scattering as the player walks through the blowing snow:

 

http://youtu.be/_2UEvDeTHeE

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_kalbaern]

               

While there is the issue with the -bouncing off- when moving, I think overall that it still looks great and I'd definitely use it if made available. '>

 

Seeing your video, I think it'd make a great sandstorm effect as well (new textures of course) and I think someone else was looking for a sandstorm effect here in the recent past.

 

Keep in mind that while CC Creators, Builders and Scripters will strive for perfections that are beyond us ... the average player sees what has been done and enjoys it .. even if our own expectations aren't quite met.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Killmonger]

               

Oseryn,

 

Good job so far....

 

Just got back to the forum to find all sorts of amazing goodness, including your fine effort .

 

The scattering effect is not so awful. Admittedly, the video does show the problem.

 

But I liked the effect. (I have spent at great deal of time in blizzards)

 

What if the particles were a bit larger? randomized? Noise?

 

Perhaps if the emitters were animated (up/down) upon some wavelength. Like veils of snow.

 

kalbeern also had some great alternate uses/ idea

 

I can recall wonderful cel animations of blowing winds in many different cartoons shows

(back in the day...)

 

Nwn needs more improved environmental effects

Keep up the effort !

 

'>

)

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_CaveGnome]

               

@Oseryn

Not a bad start at all, your effect looks good to me. Perhaps you can find the old "adding weather effects" thread useful. ShadowM made an impressive sandstorm effect and there was a lot of interesting info on emitters, rain and tutti quanti.

 

http://forum.bioware...eather-effects/

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Oseryn]

               

Thank you for the feedback. This weekend, I hope to have some time to try and refine this a bit. If I can get this looking a bit better I will post it for others to tinker with or use if they want.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

Nice approach to the effect!  I've taken apart some similar effects in Fallout 3 and they involved what, in Neverwinter terms, would be a transparent placeable, often a flat plane with a warp or S-curve in it, over which an animated texture would move the snow/papers/whatever.  When I say animated, though, I don't mean like a proceduretype cycle .txi animation but, rather, a where animesh captures the movement of an animated UV map in order to produce a "scrolling" texture.

 

But I kind of like your approach more assuming it isn't too intensive.  More Neverwintery-looking.  I assume the deflection is caused by creature wind.  You can determine if this is the case by going to the Advanced Video Options and turning the second slider from the top to Creature Wind Off (grass).  If this is the case, you might want to check your emitter and ensure that affectedByWind is disabled (presumably set to 0) in the emitter.  There might be a chance of that doing the trick for the effect you're looking for.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Oseryn]

               

Ah ha!

 

Yes I had turned on affectedByWind in testing and forgot all about that. Turning it off did the trick to stop the particles from scattering when encountering a moving object.


I've managed to refine it some and it looks better. I made two versions so far.


1.  A 6m wide x 4m high - 3 separate emitters with varying velocity, blur, birthrate and lifeExp. An air0effect of sort. Will likely refine this one some more - making it 6m high instead of 4m. BTW it does seem that ~ 6m is as wide or high as you can go. Apparently the game somehow ignores sizes bigger than that (I tried many different sizes).


2.  A 6m wide x 0.25 m high - 1 emitter - snow sweeping across, and close to, the ground.


I've fiddled with a 3rd version trying to get an animated wave like Killmonger mentioned. I really like that idea and think it would enhance the effect. I have not had much success so far however. The emitters seem to want to rotate oddly and inconsistently when I link them to a path (thinking back to OTR's tutorial on spline paths - I re-viewed it and still seems emitters want to rotate funny).

 

So another question: Can emitters actually be linked to a spline path?

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               

Ah ha!

 

Yes I had turned on affectedByWind in testing and forgot all about that. Turning it off did the trick to stop the particles from scattering when encountering a moving object.

 

'>

 

I've fiddled with a 3rd version trying to get an animated wave like Killmonger mentioned. I really like that idea and think it would enhance the effect. I have not had much success so far however. The emitters seem to want to rotate oddly and inconsistently when I link them to a path (thinking back to OTR's tutorial on spline paths - I re-viewed it and still seems emitters want to rotate funny).

 

So another question: Can emitters actually be linked to a spline path?

 

I haven't messed with that stuff in forever but, off the top of my head, I'd suggest possibly setting it up where you baked the animations onto a dummy helper object then attached the emitter to that.  Alt-a (Align Selection) keyboard shortcut helps with getting it perfect.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ShadowM]

               

I have not seen you updated version of the flowing snow. I was going to do some, but never got around to it. Did you add bounce to them so you do not loose some of your emmitters under the walkmesh since you have them low to the ground. You can can control the bending around pc some by the adjusting the weight, angle and bounce settings of the emitters. Like OTR said if you going to animate a dummy helper might be useful. Either way I love to see the next version you release.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Oseryn]

               

Here's were I ended up with this: http://neverwinterva...snow-placeables

 

I tried some of the ideas mentioned in this thread and the more features I tried to incorporate, the more lag was caused. I did get the emitters added to a moving dummy, but it just didn't seem to achieve the look I was hoping for, so I removed the animated emitter feature. It didn't seem to increase lag that I could tell, just didn't look as good as I hoped.

 

So I ended up pretty much back where I started but it is greatly refined from the original. It was also a pretty good learning exercise. That said, I will be using the ground placeable for sure, so it did end up being (for me) more than just a learning exercise '>

 

As always, if you can use this, wonderful! You may also use or modify this as desired, incorporate in your world in any way, or enhance or fix as you see fit.

 

~ Oseryn