align to motion

[Elvis Deane]

“Use emitter’s angle and range” just creates new Emitter Range and Emitter Angle graphs for the particle type, which won’t help you in this case. Align to Motion should do what you’re looking for, you can also change the number in the box beside it to rotate the particle in the right initial direction. Tt really shows best when you have a high Motion Randomness setting.

—
Elvis Deane!

The Apprentice Magician’s Guide to particleIllusion

The particleIllusion FAQ

[Alan Lorence]

I don’t think you can do it automatically. “Align to motion” is for particles — aligns them to the direction they are moving (not the direction the emitter is moving). It might work to check the “attached to emitter” option and move the slider to the far left, but it might not work and even if it does it may not be exactly what you want.

I think you’ll have to manually keyframe the emission angle (with a low emission range) to get the results you want.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Chortorn]

[Alan Lorence] “I don’t think you can do it automatically. “Align to motion” is for particles — aligns them to the direction they are moving (not the direction the emitter is moving). It might work to check the “attached to emitter” option and move the slider to the far left, but it might not work and even if it does it may not be exactly what you want.

I think you’ll have to manually keyframe the emission angle (with a low emission range) to get the results you want.”

>>

Yes, that was what I concluded too. I tried to export the emitter’s position data and manipulate them in AE by this expression in rotation:

radiansToDegrees(Math.atan2(this.position[1] – this.position.valueAtTime(time – 0.03)[1], this.position[0] – this.position.valueAtTime(time – 0.03)[0]))

It makes the object point it’s nose forward all the time. Then I converted the expression into keyframes and copied it. However, Particle Illusion does not allow import of anything but position data, which means – as you have said – it has to be done manually.