sprite orientation?

[mtmckinley]

I've got a question for once. :)

Is there a way to control the orientation of sprite particles so that they are not just camera-facing?

Idealy, I'd like to be able to orient them to an axis.

Many thanks in advance. :)

[kbrown]

i believe they're always facing the cam and you can't change that. you can spin them, scale them etc though...

[mtmckinley]

yeah, I might just have to use planes and stuff

[Dann]

Actually, you can fake it with runtime expressions on the spriteScaleXPP and spriteTwistPP attributes. It IS a fake, but depending on what you're going for, it can work.

Try something like this.

Creation expressions:
particleShape1.spriteScaleXPP = rand(-1,1);
particleShape1.spriteScaleYPP = rand(-1,1);
particleShape1.spriteTwistPP = rand(-180,180);

Runtime expressions:
if (particleShape1.spriteScaleXPP > 1)
{
particleShape1.spriteScaleXPP = -1;
}
if (particleShape1.spriteTwistPP > 180)
{
particleShape1.spriteTwistPP = -180;
}

particleShape1.spriteScaleXPP += 0.01;
particleShape1.spriteTwistPP += 2;

Attached is a sample file to see what I mean.

I'm very excited to help Mike after all the times he's helped me. I hope it works.

[mtmckinley]

No, 'fraid that's not quite what I'm looking for. Neat affect, though. :)

I imagine I'll just need to use geometry.

Thanks guys! If anyone comes up with anything, feel free to let me know. :)

[mtmckinley]

Check out this video for an example of the kind of thing I'm going for:

http://www.mtmckinley.net/private/port/McKinley_particles.zip

For example, the waterfall and the "swish" of the character's sword.

(FYI- This is a video of some of my particle fx done for the game Fallen Kingdoms, recently announced. These were done in a custom particle editor developed in-house.)

[kbrown]

I don't know what the requirements are but could you not render the particle effects from an angle where they look alright and then take that resulted sequence and map it on a plane as a texture sequence... or something :)

[tathu]

I found a tutorial here, maybe it help:
http://zj.deathfall.com/Changing_Sprite_Orientation.html

------------------------
ta thu

[mtmckinley]

No, that's not quite what I'm looking for. While it does change the sprite's twist, they still remain camera-facing.

Thanks, though. :)