ribbon particle

[Delain Canucci]

Hello all,

I like to try different things with particles and love to experiment,now i heard from people that the ribbon particle also is intorduced on sl and i am curious if this is true and if so where i can get an example for this script ?

[Rolig Loon]

Here's the most current word (I think), from Nalates's blog:

Ribbon Particle

A new type of particle has been added: Ribbon.

New Ribbon Particle

A ribbon particle repeats the texture horizontally. Maestro says the ribbon particle does NOT always face your camera.  Also they move with the object. Some were thinking skid marks for tires.

If I understood, ribbons will have most of the same limits and options as current particles plus the new ones.

Caution

Kelly Linden cautions, “One very important thing to realize about these particle changes is that this is the server side support for them, there is also a required viewer update of course which I don’t have an ETA on. As a side effect of this any particle system that uses glow or the blend functions will not render at all on older viewers.”

So, that means 3.5 viewers and older will be particle lame.

[Delain Canucci]

Yes that one i have seen but it does not mention where to get an example of the script anywhere i checked LSL library and also inworld ,asked around but no one has seen or heard about it lol so i guess i continue my search and hope i find it one day,but thank you for you're reply

[Rolig Loon]

Maybe because it doesn't exist yet.  If the code isn't in the servers to support it, no example will work.

[2nis Sands]

I found 2 examples so far:

 

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/NEKOTECH-Nyan-Cat-Particle-Ribbon-Walker/5286834

 

[Rolig Loon]

Yes, ribbon particles are in beta still, but a few people are already playing with them.  AFAIK, there's no scheduled release date yet.

[arton Rotaru]

The server support for ribbon, and the 2 other new particle effects (Blend and Glow) is on the Main Grid for month actually. All what was missing was a Viewer that can render them as well. This was released today. It's the Maintenance RC Viewer which can be found on the Alternate Viewer page.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Alternate_Viewers

[Innula Zenovka]

There was an article in Nalates' blog yesterday about Ribbon Particles in Second Life, which includes a report of what Maestro Linden had to say about them, and which reproduces his demo script.

The wiki article on llParticleSystem has now been updated to include the new parameters.

 

ETA  OK, what am I doing wrong?

I downloaded the Maintenance Viewer, and  got Jopsy's  default chain script from The Particle Lab.   I put a chain texture in and made me the target and put in an on/off toggle and it's all working as I would expect.

I then add PSYS_PART_RIBBON_MASK to the end of the flags and it highlights as expected and the script compiles.  But no particles, or none that are visible, unless I comment out that flag.

Is there something else I need to set to make it work?

[Rolig Loon]

Cool! I missed her blog this week.  Thanks, Innula

 

[Qie Niangao]

It's been working fine in my scripts, Innula, so I went to the Particle Laboratory and tried with the '"Chain" PARTICLE TEMPLATE' script (added the _RIBBON_MASK param, and simply had it target llGetOwner), and that seemed to work fine, too. Maybe a little more obvious what's happening with a fully opaque TEXTURE_PLYWOOD at first, but that wouldn't explain lack of particles altogether.

[ETA: Speaking of chains, it seems that _RIBBON_MASK overrides _FOLLOW_VELOCITY_MASK, so a whole bunch of old-school chain and rope particles will need some 90-degree rotation for use in ribbons.]

I'm still fiddling with the blending functions. Across the street, Strife suggests some visuals to help make sense of the OpenGL documentation, but it's largely eluded my comprehension so far.

[Innula Zenovka]

Thanks, Qie.   I took another look, bearing in mind what you said about the 90 degree rotation, and it turned out to be that the texture I was using made the particles very hard to see (though very obvious without the _RIBBON_MASK flag).  So it is working.

[Tomos Halsey]

It's a very handy effect, I've already used it for swords with trails and vehicle tracks. I'm looking for a way to use it for foot prints and bullet decals since the particle follows the orientation of the prim doing the rezzing.

Here is a quick demo on getting it working like the picture provided earlier.

llParticleSystem([PSYS_PART_FLAGS,PSYS_PART_RIBBON_MASK|PSYS_PART_INTERP_SCALE_MASK|PSYS_PART_INTERP_COLOR_MASK|PSYS_PART_EMISSIVE_MASK,PSYS_SRC_PATTERN, PSYS_SRC_PATTERN_DROP,PSYS_PART_BLEND_FUNC_SOURCE, PSYS_PART_BF_SOURCE_ALPHA,PSYS_PART_BLEND_FUNC_DEST, PSYS_PART_BF_ONE_MINUS_SOURCE_ALPHA,PSYS_SRC_BURST_SPEED_MIN,0.01,PSYS_SRC_BURST_SPEED_MAX,0.01,PSYS_PART_MAX_AGE,4.0,PSYS_SRC_BURST_PART_COUNT,2,PSYS_SRC_ACCEL,<0.0,0.0,0.0>,PSYS_PART_START_GLOW,1.0,PSYS_PART_END_GLOW,0.0,PSYS_PART_START_SCALE,<0.5,0.5,0.0>,PSYS_PART_END_SCALE,<0.5,0.5,0.0>,PSYS_PART_START_COLOR,<1.0,0.0,0.0>,PSYS_PART_END_COLOR,<0.996,0.890,0.192>]);

 

[Chloe1982 Constantine]

Has anyone seen the effect where a particle stream for a chain leash occasionally "flashes"?

Every so often, the particles appear to be surrounded by a cloud that is light and bright; this flashes on and off. The flashing appears to depend on camera angle and I am told is a result of the LL introduction of ribbon particles.

I know I'm not the only one to have seen it, but really want to know if there is a fix for the problem.

 

Many thanks,

Chloe

[Qie Niangao]

This isn't really a scripting bug and I'm not sure it appeared with ribbon particles, per se, but in any case I don't think there's a fix yet. The bug was reported back in September. You probably can't see it because the jira was castrated by cowards, but the report is BUG-3960 in case it's ever listed as fixed in viewer release notes. To confirm that it's the same bug, see this video linked in the forbidden bug report.

[Chloe1982 Constantine]

That sure looks like the same effect; thank you for pointing me to the bug I can't get to see! Are there any known workarounds? I dread the number of bug reports that will come in about this issue.

I was told it was ribbon related and since I write scripts, hence the question here!

[Qie Niangao]

Probably not the kind of workaround you had in mind, but in case it helps, the effect is reportedly greatly attenuated by enabling shadows.

Oddly, I'm not seeing this bug copied over into the Firestorm jira. I'd be surprised if Firestorm is immune to it, but don't know.