Request for Emitters

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

                <breathless with...>

This thread is meant to act as a general collection for cool custom emitters. 

Emitters are <as he has cause to know intimately> very finicky things. There are *lots* of parameters and a minor change in one can lead to wildly unpredictable behavior. I never did get my blood dripping splatters to work on that nasty demonic altar <shudders>.

What I'm looking for is a text printout of the emitter setting and a link to any custom image or model used by the emitter.

I'll try to index submitted emitters in this first post.

<...anticipation>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <rattling his...>

My first request is for a dangly string of skulls using Birdman's great Celtic Skull icon (or something similar)

I know you can do static strings of particles (vines) and you can have strings affected by wind. I'd like to hang some strings of skulls off that Hut ;-)

Second request is for falling chunks so the hut sheds debri as it walks. I can go with a modified falling leaf emitter, but I'd like to see what our emitter guru's come up with... collaboration is great! =) Cestus doesn't mind sharing credit on the Hut at all <you haven't told him have you?>

And it gets you into the April CCC with only a *little* skullsweat... ;-) <you really should let him know>

Can you picture it? Skulls swaying, chunks dropping, windows glaring... <grumpy dwarf glaring...>

<...skull>
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Rolo Kipp, 10 avril 2012 - 02:16 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               Wouldn't it work better to use a danglymesh for the string of skulls? If you'd make a texture that had the skull texture and the rope texture in it, you could make several skulls conected by a rope as a single dangly mesh. If all the verts on one skull had the same weight (or what ever the correct term was) and all the verts on another had a different weight, they should be moved by the wind without the skulls getting deformed. I did this with a simple rope and it was hard to get this right, my first attempt made the rope look like it was dancing instead of being moved by the wind. It would be even harder to make the skulls move properly, but I think it can be done.

That way you'd get 3d skulls instead of 2d skulls (and alot more polygons, but possibly not too much for the engine to handle).
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <digging through...>

I'm trying to think of ways to both reduce the load on the GFX card and on the engine. Also, I really like that icon Birdman did :-). My thought was an emitter based on the "vines" emitter, using a 2x2 grid of 4 skull icons, assigned randomly (as per OTR), with the particle being aligned to the camera, would use a lot less resources than a string of models and less cpu time than a danglymesh while maintaining high quality of image.

I also want to stretch our knowledgebase on emitters :-)

I do plan to try making the thigh "feathers" dangly...

<...the rubbish bin>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <Adding fuel...>

Request #3: Better chimney smoke.

@ Zwerkules: You mentioned you replace the Bioware smoke with DLA-style:

Zwerkules wrote...

It's not just the texture. There are differences in the emitters and animations, too. DLA smoke is affected by wind and has an animation which changes the birthrate a couple of times while the Bioware smoke is not affected by wind and has the same birthrate (in most cases it is 20) all the time.

The texture alone will not make the smoke look much better. It is the changing birthrate and that the smoke is affected by wind that makes it look a lot more natural. You can also make whiter smoke or darker smoke by changing the emitter's start colour and end colour settings. Even red or green smoke is possible.

Could you post the emitter settings here? Please? <he wants the hut to smoke>
[edit: Or just give me permission to dissect Medieval ;-]

<...to the fire>
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Rolo Kipp, 11 avril 2012 - 05:52 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Mecheon]

               I've always wanted to know, is it possible to make an emitter that looks like its working in reverse? Basically, as if its sucking things in rather than emitting?

I'm figuring the way is to basically set it backwards and to have it grow as it goes inward, to make it look like its sucking something from nowhere, but I've never known where to begin with it
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Leurnid]

               I seem to recall being able to set particles to spawn in a cloud and use the emitter as an 'attractor' by using negative values.
That was on 3DStudioMAX 1.x in the late 90's though... software may have changed, or worse, my memory might be just that bad.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               

Rolo Kipp wrote...

<Adding fuel...>

Request #3: Better chimney smoke.

@ Zwerkules: You mentioned you replace the Bioware smoke with DLA-style:

Zwerkules wrote...

It's not just the texture. There are differences in the emitters and animations, too. DLA smoke is affected by wind and has an animation which changes the birthrate a couple of times while the Bioware smoke is not affected by wind and has the same birthrate (in most cases it is 20) all the time.

The texture alone will not make the smoke look much better. It is the changing birthrate and that the smoke is affected by wind that makes it look a lot more natural. You can also make whiter smoke or darker smoke by changing the emitter's start colour and end colour settings. Even red or green smoke is possible.

Could you post the emitter settings here? Please? <he wants the hut to smoke>
[edit: Or just give me permission to dissect Medieval ;-]

<...to the fire>

There's a building with two smoke emitters in the Arabian Nights tileset (tca01_c02_03). The animloop01 animation has the birthrate settings for those emitters. You'd have to integrate those into the animations of your hut creature. You can also make the emitters emit smoke faster or slower depending on what the hut creature is doing.
There's also the tiledefault animation which sets the emitter's birthrate to 0. That's only needed for turning the emitters off. If for some animations you need the smoke emitters of your hut to be off, set their birthrate to 0.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <tamping his pipe...>

pulled the em_smoke02 emitter and its anim keys from one of your Medieval tiles (it's visible in a couple of Cestus' recent screenies).  I'll turn it into a stand-alone placeable and post a post-mortem of it in this thread in a bit.

Next up: Falling stuff. Where have you guys seen stuff falling off models? I can modify the falling leaves, as TAD did for his great Topiary Guardians, but is there a more effective emitter? Something that doesn't waft down on a breeze but just plops down?

I want dirt clods to drop when the Hut stands up or moves violently.

Then I'll start experimenting with the string of skulls (dopes on ropes?)...

<...and lighting it>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <trying to think backwards...>

Mecheon wrote...
I've always wanted to know, is it possible to make an emitter that looks like its working in reverse? Basically, as if its sucking things in rather than emitting?

I'm figuring the way is to basically set it backwards and to have it grow as it goes inward, to make it look like its sucking something from nowhere, but I've never known where to begin with it

That would be a truly cool effect, but I don't see how it could work with what little *I* know of the emitter system. you can "emit" all the particles at once and have them persist (like the string of particles that make up the vines) and you can vary the birthrate/velocity, etc. But the particles all begin at the emitter and travel on a vector that may or may not be affected by wind or "mass" (which should have been called gravity, as it determines how much gravity affects the particle, regardless of mass and *can* be negative... which only means particles rise (like smoke)). There is also a "gravity" value, but I can't quite figure it out at the mo.

<gnideeccus ot esolc ylgninethgirf gnimoc dna...>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Bannor Bloodfist]

               Emitters emit, they don't suck.  As such, no, you can't get one to pull particles back.

You MIGHT be able to accomplish the illusion by having a stack of emitters with varied lengths of time to display their particles, and have the later ones spit larger particles for shorter periods of time.  The final bit about expanding something, would have to be an animated object, and the entire animation sequence would take forever to get it right.

Surely, not worth the effort.

As to gravity vs mass, the gravity option is a multiplier, it strengthens or weakens gravity.  The mass option is just that, how much total mass the emitted particles have.  Typically for emitted bits, you want that low but having a larger value can increase the visibility etc.  More options than you really need I think.  Most don't really change much of the visibility of the emitted object.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Bannor Bloodfist, 15 avril 2012 - 02:37 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <quibbling only because...>

Hmmm, then mass might more properly be called *density*.

If I give a huge item the same ''mass" value as a tiny item, they fall at the same rate. If the term actually meant mass, then that house-balloon weighing the same tenth of a kilo that the lead ball does, should just *drift* down...

If, OTOH, "Mass" means "density" (or mass per volume) then the house balloon, containing many times the volume of the lead sinker would weigh more for any given gravity field and so would fall at the same rate.

So the "gravity" value is a local (anti-)gravity multiplier (applied only to the emitter particles) to an assumed normal 1 Gee field and the "mass" value is how much, little or reversed the gravity field (and air-density!) affects the particles...

<...he's so happy to see bb post>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Bannor Bloodfist]

               Yep, it gets conflusin.  Mass is generally expressed as weight of an object given 1g.  Regardless of physical size.  (I Think).  And since there are never in real life those clean situations where other things don't interfere like wind, direction given to the object itself, etc you can never really 'prove' anything.  I laugh when I here someone tell me that a 1oz bullet, duplicated, once in a gun and one in your hand, when fired/dropped would hit the ground at the same time....   sorry, but we have already proven that the earth is NOT flat, so, you won't find a flat surface large/long enough to actually measure something like that.  Most especially since scientists have also proven that gravity varies a bit depending on location of the earth, phase of the moon, time of day, etc.  

I think the makers of 3dsmax assume a 1g field, with the size being immaterial, so that the "mass" is just a weight.  Then they give you the option to change the gravity field as well.  Basically two ways of doing the same thing.  Slowing or speeding up the movement towards the "ground".  

Oh, and throw in the real definitions of mass, and massive, with the apparent wrongfully used/associated use we see in everyday life, and things get even more confusing.

I can't be sure, never actually had physics.  Heck, highest math I ever took in school was basic algebra, as I was removed from the school population at a very early age. (relatively speaking). .  Made taking programming courses as an adult, a real pain, as I didn't have the math background I really needed.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Bannor Bloodfist, 15 avril 2012 - 02:39 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <whistling a tune...>

I come from a family of musicians and musical ability is closely tied with math skills. However, I can't even play a kazoo. <word> Still, I enjoy math. I really got engrossed in chaos & complexity theory after seeing the Mandelbrot & Julia sets.

*shakes head in attempt to stop wool-gathering* Anyway, that "Mass" can be negative, and the particles rise, the values make sense if you consider the emitter to assume a 1G gravity and a 1 atmosphere air density. 0 mass (as I use in the Fogbref emitter) is the same density as the air and so neither rises (like the bubbles emitter I modified to make it) nor sinks (like the leaves). Negative values indicate lower density than the air (except that there doesn't seem to be any terminal velocity going *up* ;-P )

The gravity value, though. It *should* modify the 1G field the particles are emitted into. Need to experiment with it sometime. A "grav" of 0.0 seems to leave all the gravity-like effects to "mass". And what about drag? Hmmm.

Here's the emitter node for Fogbref:

node emitter fogbref_m 
  parent vdr_fogbref_m 
  position 0.0 0.15 -0.17
  orientation  0.0 -0.707107 -0.707107  -3.14159
  wirecolor 0.568627 0.109804 0.694118  
    colorStart 0.933333 0.933333 0.933333  
    colorEnd 0.466667 0.466667 0.466667  
    alphaStart 0.8 
    alphaEnd 0.1 
    sizeStart 0.04 
    sizeEnd 0.2 
    sizeStart_y 0.0 
    sizeEnd_y 0.0 
    frameStart 1 
    frameEnd 4 
    birthrate 1 
    spawnType 0 
    lifeExp 2.5 
    mass 0.0 
    spread 0.3 
    particleRot 1.0 
    velocity 0.05 
    randvel 0.2 
    fps 5 
    random 1 
    inherit 0 
    inherit_local 0 
    inherit_part 0 
    inheritvel 0 
    xSize 4 
    ySize 4 
    bounce 0 
    bounce_co 0.0 
    loop 0 
    update Fountain 
    render Normal 
    Blend Lighten 
    update_sel 1 
    render_sel 1 
    blend_sel 3 
    deadspace 0.0 
    opacity 0.5 
    blurlength 5.0 
    lightningDelay 0.0 
    lightningRadius 0.0 
    lightningScale 0.0 
    blastRadius 0.0 
    blastLength 0.0 
    twosidedtex 1 
    p2p 0 
    p2p_sel 1 
    p2p_type Bezier 
    p2p_bezier2 0.0 
    p2p_bezier3 0.0 
    combinetime 0.0 
    Drag 0.0 
    grav 0.0 
    threshold 0.0 
    texture fx_fogbref 
    xgrid 2 
    ygrid 2 
    affectedByWind true 
    m_isTinted 1 
    renderorder 0 
    Splat 0 
endnode

And the anim keys that give it that 6-second puff cycle:

newanim default vdr_fogbref_m 
 length 6.0
 transtime 1.0
animroot vdr_fogbref_m
node emitter fogbref_m 
  parent vdr_fogbref_m 
    sizeStartkey
      0.0   0.04
      2.66667   0.04
      5.66667   0.04
      5.7   0.02
      5.96667   0.03
      6.0   0.04
    endlist
    sizeEndkey
      0.0   0.20
      5.66667   0.20
      5.7   0.15
      6.0   0.20
    endlist
    birthratekey
      0.0   1.0
      2.66667   2.0
      5.66667   1.0
      5.7   25.0
      5.96667   25.0
      6.0   1.0
    endlist
   masskey
      0.0   -0.0000999
      5.66667   0.0
      5.7   -0.0009999
      5.96667   0.0
    endlist
    spreadkey
      0.0   0.3
      5.66667   0.3
      5.7   0.0872664
      5.96667   0.174533
      6.0   0.3
    endlist
    velocitykey
      0.0   0.05
      5.66667   0.0499285
      5.7   0.25
      5.96667   0.25
      6.0   0.05
    endlist
endnode

The first column for each key is the time in seconds at which the key is applied. The second is the value. So, for example, the birthrate starts at 1.0 and quibles a bit until 5.7 seconds when it jumps to 25 (the puff of fog) that lasts until just before the end of the cycle at 6 seconds.

Notice that I play a *tiny* bit with Mass, giving a very slight rise to the breath intermittently.

<...completely off key>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Leurnid]

               A brief explaination of how to set up a Sucking Vortex Emitter in Unity

From system to system, particle effects may not be consistent, but knowing there is a way to do it on one suite often leads to discovery in another.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Leurnid, 15 avril 2012 - 06:07 .