Direct manipulation of particles

[nathank]

Quick question that probably has a very complex answer... Is it possible to get access to the list of particles that have been created by an emitter and alter them directly (e.g. set position, rotation)?

 

I'm investigating the possibility of using perlin noise to create a point to point lightning bolt. Currently I'm thinking I'll need to make my own class to create and manage a bunch of billboard sprites manually.

Another related thing I'd like to do is have all the particles move with the emitter. Again there doesn't seem to be any setting for this so it seems like I need to access the emitted particles and offset them.

[ulf.schroeter]

first part: no direct access available

second part: ObjectParticles::setEmitterBased(1)

[frustum]

New ObjectBilboards node will be available in the upcoming SDK. This node allows to render bunch of billboards in single draw call with optional depth sort.

[nathank]

first part: no direct access available

Figured that would be the answer so I went ahead last night and attempted it by creating/managing the billboards myself. Actually got quite a nice perlin noise lightning working after only a couple of hours. The only downside is that I'm essentially drawing lines by using many circular billboards (using the default particle texture) so depending on the overall size of the effect it can be pretty heavy on the number of billboards used. The new ObjectBillboards node should optimise it quite a bit. I'll keep an eye out for that one. All in all though, it seems relatively easy to create this sort of thing if the built in particle system doesn't handle it. I think for the kind of "controlled" particles I'm often after this is going to be the better method in many cases.

 

second part: ObjectParticles::setEmitterBased(1)

That looks like what I was after. Will give it a go tonight and confirm it has the desired effect.

EDIT: Yup, that definitely does what I needed. Thanx :)

[manguste]

ObjectBillboards class, just in case.