one more question about sprites and particles

[breakthelocke]

So far nothing has stumped me as much as this one--- I would like my particle emitter (smoke) to begin on <x> frame. How can I do that? Every time I try something, it just keeps blowing out smoke starting on frame one and ending on the last.

For example, how would you get someone to have a cloud of green smoke come out of their mouth when they open it, and stop when they close it?

 

muc appreciated.

[rusty]

So far nothing has stumped me as much as this one--- I would like my particle emitter (smoke) to begin on frame. How can I do that? Every time I try something, it just keeps blowing out smoke starting on frame one and ending on the last.

For example, how would you get someone to have a cloud of green smoke come out of their mouth when they open it, and stop when they close it?

 

muc appreciated.

 

There are several ways...

 

The proper way is to animate the particle properties, in the chor, expand the emitter (you may have to click on the display all drivers button) and on frame 0 set the rate of emission to zero then go to just before you wish to start the smile and set that to zero then go to where you want the smoke at its thickest and set that to whatever... in the graph editor, adjust the slope to of the emission key frame curve the way you want it. To stop, reverse the process.

 

Another way I sometimes use is kind of crude but you can position the emitter way out of the scene then in a single frame pop it back into the scene

 

Cheers,

Rusty

[breakthelocke]

oh I really like the out of frame idea!!!! thanks again-- I had been using the opacity over life graph editor and didn't know what was going on...... I'll try the emissions. thanks!

[rusty]

oh I really like the out of frame idea!!!! thanks again-- I had been using the opacity over life graph editor and didn't know what was going on...... I'll try the emissions. thanks!

 

I can't remember why I use that second method... it has disadvantages galore... your particles can be skewed by the motion bringing it into the scene.

 

r

[breakthelocke]

hah sorry one more question-- when I try to keep it out of the camera view and then bring it in in one frame, it leaves a trail of smoke particles on it's way. any ideas?

[Fuchur]

And you can specify it by a pose of course... I like it that way the most...

 

*Fuchur*

[johnl3d]

I did a simple animation after setting up an on/off pose for the model with off being 0% emitting and on being 100% emitting with the life of the sprite being 5 frames

 

spritepose.mov

 

 

V14 project file and sprite

 

 

aspritepose.zip

 

 

Turned sptites on twice for only 1 frame

 

 

johnl3d---(who told john to animate....)