Alan Lorence
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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Ok, I get the same behavior you do. I think it has to do with Layer Offset “break” — maybe a bug? It’s hard to say without the background footage, as I don’t know exactly what you’re doing with the layer offset breaks, but I have a couple of things to try.
1) It appears based on what the Layer Offset is doing, that your footage is made up of several different clips. If that’s the case, then you may need to do each clip separately.
2) R-click on the Layer Offset in the hierarchy window and select “export position data” and use the clipboard option. Then reset the Layer offset (r-click in the graph window and “reset”), add your emitter(s), then import the position data for the Layer Offset back from the clipboard. You’ll probably have to adjust the position of the placed emitters again, but at least they’re in there.
Alan.
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Any time the mouse cursor in the stage window is a green box with arrows on it, clicking will set and change the Layer Offset point. If you want to add an emitter, you have to select either another emitter in the hierarchy, or if there are no other emitters, select the layer name. Once your cursor turns back to the regular white circle (“Add” cursor), you can add emitters.
If you only have a single Layer Offset point, it shouldn’t do anything.
Alan.
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When it’s ready, it will be announced here and on our website. I’m not saying when it will be available, but anywhere from 1-3 months from now.
Alan.
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I’m looking into this, and I can’t figure it out. It seems like something in that particle type got “goofed up” somehow, but I can’t figure out what.
Nothing I change seems to fix the problem, but I can create a new particle type (in the emitter props dialog, select the emitter in the hierarchy, then click the “new particle type” button), and the new particle type behaves correctly. I’ve never seen anything like this. How did you create this emitter? Was it built from another emitter?
Alan.
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There will be no sound while using particleIllusion, but you can check the “preserve audio” option at the bottom of the output options dialog if you save an AVI from pIllusion.
Alan.
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Finding that file probably won’t help you.
It probably is a Vista issue — SE’s copy-protection does not work with Vista yet.
We’ll be changing this in the next few months (or sooner).
Alan.
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[jamesinnewcastle] “1. Is there a ‘Basic’ emitter that you can start developing your own emitter from?”
You can load the “blank” library (on our website if you don’t have it).
You can also open the properties dialog for any library, then select a folder (not an emitter) and click the “new emitter” button under the hierarchy.[jamesinnewcastle] “2. Number – Is that total number of particles emitted over the Life of the emitter, the number of particles emitted per Frame or the Number of particles emitted per second?”
None of the above. Think of it as a relative quantity of particles. Elvis may have figured out the settings needed to get X particles per second (I think I remember that posted some time ago, but I may be wrong).
[jamesinnewcastle] “3. Anything over life – Is the ‘Life’ here that life that was conferred on each particle when it was born? What units is Life in if any, frames? seconds?”
Yes, the life of each particle. Life has no units — like most parameters, it’s unitless. Think of it as a relative value.
Alan.
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I would never use “life” to control when particles are present and when they’re not. I’d use “number”.
But this may be the long-standing “green particles” bug. For some life values (very long usually, but maybe for short ones too) the particles turn green at some point in their life, even though there is no green in their color gradient. It’s something to do with the number of gradient points, and the amount of time the particle is alive. I’d suggest messing around with the color and/or transparency gradient, and add/remove points.
Or perhaps use “size” instead of “life”. (Although I would personally still use “number” — creating 100 particles that have a 0 life or 0 size still takes some time and memory.)
Alan.
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Just make the stage size the same as the background image, then work with the stage window zoomed out. Your only other option would be to resize the footage in another app.
Alan.