particle help

[bearded]

any meshers work with particles? i need some help. i spent the whole day trying to work with rotation.
what i've done is created a male basic running in a single pose and then used superspray to create particles from it, with the particles shooting behind the runner. set the gow and fade to 0. it works, and creates a runner behind the character for speeding bullet and sprint, but for some reason the particles are all oriented 'north' based on the map. i can't get it to orient to the runner. how do i get particles to rotate to the right direction, facing the runner? note that most changes that work in max simply do not export to nif. but there has to be a way to do it, right? i mean, something is signaling the mesh to point north.

[grenadier]

two ways to do it:  

You can create a box and assign PArray to the box.  Once you know where the particles emit, you can rotate the emitter accordingly.  Scale the Parray accordingly for your animation sequences. Hide the box so that it doesn't show in the character tool.

Another way is it to create gravity and deflectors so that the particles fall and roll off. Remeber to bind these to space warp and choose gravity and then deflector so that your particles will be affected by these space warps.

These are basic explanations of the options you have.  Sometime I'll make a Spitfire mesh and show you what I was talking about.

[bearded]

Parray seemed to work perfectly, but when I tried to export to nif, max crashed. it exports when i leave the particles to ticks, but when I use instanced geometry and pick object male basic, it crashes.

[grenadier]

Sounds like the exporter can't translate it properly.  I ran into a similar error when I loaded a plug-in I wanted to try.  This is where your going to have to experiment and try an alternative way of getting your effect to work.  You got pretty far from what you were doing before.  You were able to export it without a problem.  Right?  If so the exporter may not work properly with some max features.  I'll fiddle with it and see if I can find a resolution.

[bearded]

the thing that is different is with superspray i can 'pick object' male basic with the instance geometry and it will export, but the mesh particles will not orient properly, they don't rotate with the object the nif is fx'ed to.
with Parray, it won't even let me export if i have the male basic as the picked object for the particles.
with either method, the picked object cannot be an animated mesh and export.
i think there is nothing in netimmerse that will allow particles to spin and rotate, i tried everything in the dropdowns.
i was hoping there was something simple i missed. i do appreciate the word on Parray, now that i know about it, i can use it for other things.

[daglob]

Okay, I don't mesh, but...

What about creating a non-animated nif posed in the right position, and have that be the particle?

[bearded]

exactly, that is what i'm doing. the animated version won't export at all on either superspray or parray. the non animated version will export on superspray but not parray. but the facing of the non animated version is always pointed north on the map. no matter what.

[oktokels]

Bearded,
Did you manage to understand how particles work?
I'm trying to make some particle emitters disappear in some skins, but when I try to alpha the textures of the particles, there are still some particles left flying around. I think there are particles that are not tied to textures? how can i hide them?

[bearded]

I got an awesome flash running particle working. Want it? And maybe you can shrink particles? I feel like I've had success with that.

[oktokels]

I got an awesome flash running particle working. Want it?

Sure, you have any mega link to download it?? i'm having trouble with e-mail right now 

And maybe you can shrink particles? I feel like I've had success with that.

Yes, but that would hide it for all the skins?? I need to isolate the particles that work without textures to hide those only and leave the ones that do have textures.

That way I could have one skin with particles and one without particles, using the alpha trick to hide the texture of the flames. But as I was saying, I can hide the texture, but there are still some small red particles flying around. I can't find in niskope where those particles can be modified. 

[bearded]

Note, these fx are particular (ha) to Jay Garrick by Daglob. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OpqK87wKml2VXtHkGUehjJ2j-fWqr3cp/view?usp=sharing

It sounds to me like the red particles weren't skinned in Max. Can you find them in Skope at all? If you can find them, you could add a texture block.

[SickAlice]

Thing I shared elsewhere, looking at the Block Details you'll see whether they do or do not have an assigned texture if it isn't just visible in the list (sometimes isn't). From there you do one of two things. You either just Hide the particle, as you say it isn't working (common for that to happen) OR assign the unassigned particles a texture. Say you just make a new texture and name it and assign that one to all the unassigned. Then you go to the alpha channel on that new texture and black it out. There you go, those particles are no longer visible. If you can link these to me I can do it so long as it isn't a huge file. I'll screenshot the process as well and share it for future reference. It's another thing that seems difficult until you see it then it's straightforward.