Particle Checkpoints Woes

[Juliena]

Right! Off the bat I'll admit that I'm not particularly good with particle scripts, so I'm sorry if what I'm asking seems ridiculous, easy, impossible or a mix of the three.

 

I've made a particle script, they burst out to either side of the character and then target a prim formed. My question is whether you can make particles work like a checkpoint system. Like, they will target one key, then another key, then another, etc. To make them move in a predictable pattern that can be controlled by these waypoints.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

[steph Arnott]

lets look at what you wrote.

[Qie Niangao]

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Juliena wrote:

My question is whether you can make particles work like a checkpoint system. Like, they will target one key, then another key, then another, etc. To make them move in a predictable pattern that can be controlled by these waypoints.

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Sure, but that's a scripting function, not a feature of a static particle system. That is, you can program mutliple calls to change the particle system such that it moves from target to target, and that will work fine. One of the glories of particles, however, is that they'll continue to work, viewer-side, without any script activity nor object updates; the desired behaviour here will require script-initiated updates to the particle system to re-target the particles.

[Rolig Loon]

Yes, you could run your particle system in a timer event, for example, and plan on changing the target UUID ( PSYS_SRC_TARGET_KEY ) each time the timer triggers.  It could make an interesting fireworks display or a laser ball.

EDIT:  Yeah ... What Qie said ^^  :smileywink:

[Juliena]

Right! That's brilliant, thank you very much both of you.  

I'd not considered using a timer to change the UUIDs after some time. I maaaay be back asking for a bit more help on some of the bits on this in the future, but for the time being, thank you very much!

[Wulfie Reanimator]

From what I understood, he wants the same particle to move between several points during its path before disappearing.

If that is the case, it's not possible, but what you could do in that situation, is create a particle effect with the flag PSYS_PART_FOLLOW_SRC_MASK and then move the source object through a set of coordinates.

[Qie Niangao]

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Wulfie Reanimator wrote:

From what I understood, he wants the same particle to move between several points during its path

before

disappearing.

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Y'know, re-reading the OP, you may well be right that it's supposed to be the same particle moving around a path of waypoints (as opposed to switching among targets from a single origin). If so, yeah, moving around the emitter (perhaps in a KFM loop) may be the best approach. Depending on intended particle dynamics (transitions of color, scale, orientation, etc.), it may be that having separate emitters at the waypoints would be as good (and would certainly send fewer updates, if any).