[Alan Lorence]

email wondertouch support.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

Use the Animation codec. It’s lossless.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

Well, since the feature set is not locked down yet, I don’t really know. It won’t be until 2007 though, but probably less than 6 months from now.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

Is Stencil the feature you want to use, or is “Area Emitter Mask” the feature you want? They’re similar, but Stencil draws the particles, then draws the stencil image over it, so particles only show where the transparent parts are. Think of it as laying a physical stencil sheet over a drawing — you only see the parts of the drawing where there are holes in the stencil.

Area Emitter Masks control where particles are created (doesn’t clip particles like the “stencil” option does), and only creates particles in the non-transparent areas of the alpha channel.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

The catalog is meant to be a short-term solution, since 3.5 will hopefully solve the entire problem. Although it hasn’t been developed yet, I’m thinking of doing away with “fixed” libraries altogether. Right now, you load a library, and can select each emitter in that library to see a preview. What I envision is having a keyword “search” box so you can have all of the emitters that fit the search criteria shown. For example, if you enter “fireworks”, you’d see all of the emitters that are tagged with that keyword, and then selecting any of them would show it in the preview window as usual.

So spending hours and hours making animated emitter thumbs is a waste of time I think.

Remember, there are over 1800 emitters right now.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

The images are currently 32×32, but the internal thumbnails are 48×48, so the catalog images *could* be made larger (48×48), but you should see how large the page gets then. It’s already a pretty huge page, with over 1800 emitters.

Animated thumbs is something on my “think about” list, but I can’t see it happening anytime soon. Generation of the animations couldn’t be automatic, storage would become an issue, as would playback. Still thinking about it though.

A downloadable version is what you have already. I won’t put the catalog as a page on our site, since it is so large it would take some time to load. Downloading and having local access to it is the best solution I think.

Searchable keywords for libraries is one of the big new features that will be in 3.5.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

Check out the Pro Emitters. Eclectic 01 and Eclectic 02.

https://www.wondertouch.com/default.asp?loadContent=pro_emitters.asp

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

Ok, I have a solution for you, but it’s not simple. Well, I guess it is sort of simple, since I’ve got some project files too.

This type of emitter was really “discovered” by one of the Pro Emitters artists, so I asked him about slowing it down. His reply is below. The “Abstract” Pro Emitters library has more of this type of effect, with much more complexity (believe it or not) so take a look at them. The page is: https://www.wondertouch.com/default.asp?loadContent=pro_emitters.asp

His response:

(Not an easy one to
be adjust by novice PI3 user). Just play around with these changes to get desire
motion or other cool effects.

Changes in parameters:

life 322% from 90%
number
size (frame 1) 32% (34) to (frame 500 (330)) 80% (75%)
velocity 70% from 182%
weight
spin -32% from -62%
motion rand.
bounce
visibility
all variations unchanged
size over life changed
velocity over life changed
weight over life
spin over life changed
motion rand. over life
bounce over life

A little confusing, and a lot of changes, so the project files he modified are available here:
https://www.wondertouch.com/downloads/temp/cow/light_wave_04_slower.zip

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

Thanks for picking one of the hardest emitters to figure out.

I’ve been playing around with it, and can’t figure out how to slow it down. I think it’s a combination of particle size (the graph is animated), life, and spin. Oh, and the reference point of the particle possibly.

I’m still looking at it.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

Just move the points that define the line.

Alan.
wondertouch