[Alan Lorence]

You need particleIllusion 3 and the “don’t erase” feature, which is how the vines “grow”. With this option, the particles are not erased, so paint themselves on the screen.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

Turning off particle display will help for regular emitters, but if there are any super emitters in the scene, it won’t help much.

I’d suggest using “active” to turn off any emitters that are no longer visible. Also, make sure that you’re not using visibility or size to make an emitter stop creating particles. Use “number” or “active”.

Other than that, I’d suggest finding the one or two emitters that are creating most of the slowdown, rendering with them only, then loading the renders as the new bg footage (delete the emitters from the scene). Render in multiple passes.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

particles without a birth are nothing, but I think I know what you mean.

To make a bunch of particles visible at the start, set the number value at frame 1 to some non-zero value. Then at frame 2 set the number to 0.

Then set the “preload frames” value to something like 60 or more to make particles present at the start.

Then crank up the life value as much as possible so the particles won’t die during the time you are interested in.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

SE only allows one layer at this time.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

I really don’t know why the resolution would decrease. Try the OpenGL page of the pIllusion Preferences dialog and check the “do not use texture RAM for bg images” option.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

The easiest way is to open the properties dialog for this stage emitter, then select the particle type in the hierarchy and click the “add particle type” button below the hierarchy to make a copy of this particle type. You can do this a few times.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

Can you give more details? It seems that it would be quite simple to do this, but finding the right particle shape image would be the hardest part. The particles need to just appear and not move after they’re created.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

If you didn’t pay attention to the codec that was selected, then you probably used the “Cinepak” codec which should never be used. It’s too old, and terrible. Use a modern codec like DivX, xvid, or Huffy UV. Those are all available on the web.

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

Here’s a slight enhancement of the original post, back in 2001 or something like that.

—————
original question:

How’s is best to approach designing a looping animation ? I’m thinking about doing some games effects.

response:

In this case you’d need to take the first few frames and blend them into the last few frames (and the last few blended into the first few). Does that make sense?

better response:

Yep, that’s the way it works, basicly, i’ve done it zillion times. Any editing application can do it. Here’s a short “how to”:

1. Render your clip in pIllusion, make it about a second longer than you want the loop to be. Save as PNG, with “save alpha” checked

2. Split the clip into two sections, one of which is the length of the loop, and the other is the “extra second” at the end.

3. Match the start frames of the two clips to same place in the timeline.

4. Do an one second crossfade (or a wipe or some other transition that looks as unnoticeable as possible) from the “extra second” clip to the “loop length” clip.

You now have a loopable animation you can export to file, as the last frame of the “loop length” clip is the frame that was in the original animation before the “extra second” clip.

————

Is this clear enough? Does somebody have a more clear description?

Alan.
wondertouch

[Alan Lorence]

Strange seeing a movie you made without seeing you in it. I expected to see you swim into the frame at some point. =)

I’d like to see a clip of some fast-swimming fist, with bubbles and other debris. As realistic as possible.

Just a little challenge.

Alan.
wondertouch