[Alan Lorence]

This is on the Mac version, right? I noticed that bug right after I released the 3.0.4 update (of course), so it will be a little while before I can get that fixed in 3.0.5.

It’s strange that nobody has reported this before.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

With such severe problems, I wonder why you haven’t contacted wondertouch support?

Over 95% of problems that people have with the Windows version of pI3 crashing are due to video driver issues, and updating your video driver (or going back to the last “qualified” driver if you use beta drivers) fixes the problems.

[Kakarutsu] “Not only do my files not load on occasion”

Do you get error messages? If you have a project that doesn’t load, please send it to wondertouch support.

[Kakarutsu] “The render program doesn’t want to render my background file in the final version”

Under what circumstances does this happen? Is it one project, or all projects? Again, sending this file to wondertouch support would be helpful.

[Kakarutsu] “there’s a mysterious force object in the final render that I never put into the project”

I can’t see how this could possibly happen. This is another file I would love to debug.

[Kakarutsu] “The motion blur looks terrible”

There are 2 types of motion blur, and several settings. I’ve never had anybody complain that the motion blur was bad.

[Kakarutsu] “the program doesn’t burn a clean alpha channel”

There are many alpha channel settings that are there to give you a clean alpha, and which ones you should use depend on what sort of particles you have. The docs cover this pretty well.

[Kakarutsu] ” the aspect ratio is messed up”

particleIllusion only uses square pixels at this time, so this is a valid complaint.

I really want you to email wondertouch support on these issues. If they are truly problems in the code, I want to fix them.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

It’s a limitation of OpenGL as implemented on OS X. Most video cards on Macs can only do 2048 x 2048 in OpenGL. I’ve heard that newer cards can do 4096 x 4096, but I don’t have details on those cards. I’ll see if I can get more info from Apple.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

Your terminology is confusing me. An emitter (non-visible in the render) creates particles (visible in the render). A super-emitter (non-visible in the render) creates free emitters (non-visible in render) which create particles (visible in render).

[Crunker] “I can pick an unlimited amount of points on a frame”

I don’t know what you mean by this.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

In order to allow non-administrator users to run particleIllusion 3 on
Windows XP, log in using an Administrator account, then run the attached bat
file. This should modify the license file to allow all users to access it.

Just unzip it, and double-click it.

https://www.wondertouch.com/downloads/pi3_user_access.zip

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

In order to allow non-administrator users to run particleIllusion 3 on
Windows XP, log in using an Administrator account, then run the attached bat
file. This should modify the license file to allow all users to access it.

Just unzip it, and double-click it.

https://www.wondertouch.com/downloads/pi3_user_access.zip

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

I’m not sure what you mean by this. Can you give an example, or better explanation?

You can use some of the emitters to do a “brushstroke” type effect, but it may not be what you want.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

Probably nNot possible at this time. There is no SDK. You can contact wondertouch support for more details, as there may be a solution that will work for you.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

Make sure you’re in “Select” mode (mouse cursor looks like an arrow in the stage) instead of “Add” mode (mouse cursor looks like a little circle).

There’s a toolbar button for this, or just use the “A” keyboard shortcut.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

Something similar, but not exact. The fire is the easy part, but the water may be impossible. The reason is, in that clip the water is “smooth”, and you can see the person behind the water. pIllusion doesn’t do “smooth” water very well, as that’s a job for a fluid simulation/renderer, not a sprite-based particle system.

For the fire, you also won’t get as much 3D to it, but you can do it by animating the “zoom” property.

Alan.
wondertouch