Changing the particle

[Elvis Deane]

You can use an image sequence or avi as a particle shape, but there are a few things to think about:

– The more frames in the animation, the more memory it’ll eat up, so having a lot of particles with a really long animation as their shape will slow things down quite a bit. I’ve used 50 or 60 frame sequences, and those work fine, but adding a sequence of a few hundred frames may cause slowness.

– Once the animation hits it’s final frame, it’ll jump back to frame 1 again. So it’s best to use looping sequences.

But using looping animations (a nice example being the bird or glass/debris emitters that Aharon made), or just timing the Life of the particles so that they vanish before the sequence starts playing over again can be effective. You do have a bit of control over the timing of how the sequences play (I think all the info about particle shapes is in Tutorial 3 of the help file)

—
Elvis Deane!
The particleIllusion FAQ
particleIllusion Resources and tutorial CD
Astounding Adventures

[Glenn Moore]

Thanks Elvis. I can see anything longer than a few secs could be very taxing. Thanks for the info. I’ll check out that section in the help files again.

[Alan Lorence]

Never let anybody’s comments about what might not be a good thing to try (such as using a 300-frame movie as a particle shape image) stop you from trying it at least one time.

It may work fine for you, or even if it’s pretty slow at least you’re able to do it.

I’ve always wanted to find loopable image sequences of different things: birds flying, animals running, dolphins swimming, etc. I think it would be a great resource to have.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Glenn Moore]

Thanks Alan. I have learned to believe that absolutely anything is do-able. It may not turn out perfectly but, yo’re right, it may be good enough for me. I am not discouraged. I’ll try it.