Particle emitter parenting

[Sirius]

Hey guys, this is about technical stuff once again...
I was wondering if someone with knowledge of Plasma could help me find a specific PRP feature I know exists, but simply cannot locate in any of Cyan's files...

It's about particles emitter. Currently I'm trying to get rain in my Age, so I copied settings from the Relto's rain emitter in a new PRP. Whoohoo, now it's raining in my Age (and rain isn't falling upwards either ).
The problem I'm facing, is that the particle emitter creates raindrops on a 20 units wide surface, not in the whole Age (think of a room-sized shower - doesn't look much like rain, once you take a few steps in any direction).

Well, obviously the emitter's area shouldn't be much bigger - we don't need to draw particles that are miles away anyway. In all Cyan's Age, the rain is just a smallish shower following the avatar so it instead feels like it's raining everywhere, while in fact it's not.

But I just can't figure out how Cyan managed to parent the avatar to the emitter... I had a look at all these objects, but none seem to be related:

• not the usual way through the avatar's CoordinateInterface
• not through the emitter's CoordinateInterface
• not in the particle modifier's parameters (since I used a copy of the Relto's)
• not in the particle's DrawableSpans (since I'm using a copy from the Relto as well)
• not through Python (I think I'd have noticed)

And even weirder, the particle emitter only follows the avatar on the X and Y axis Meaning you can go any distance on the horizontal plane and still see rain, but using flymode you can go above the particles' emit point. Very weird. That's the first time I ever see such a thing in Plasma.

[Deledrius]

Sounds like it could be a follow mod? I don't see them in the Ages you mention, but it would be really easy to make the emitter demonstrate exactly the effects you describe with a follow modifier which is constrained to the X and Y. I'd keep the Z in too, so that you can't rise above it, and it might make more sense to have it target the camera instead of the player, but that depends on your usage.

[Karkadann]

It Rain in Eder Kemo, and snows in Delin, have you tried one of those?

If worse comes to worst I can create rain my test age if you wanna try reverse engineering it

it would be in interesting change from the Stonehenge project, one of the max exports keeps on kicking out a texture file which creates a few java errors
I found a way around it but its proving to be quit the challenge

[Sirius]

Sounds like it could be a follow mod?

I didn't even know Plasma had follow mods but now that you mention it, I did see the "follow modifier" in Korman (however, as you said it's not used for particle systems, it seems).
Did Cyan ever use this object at all ? I don't remember seeing it anywhere.

It Rain in Eder Kemo, and snows in Delin, have you tried one of those?

Yeah, I tried those, but didn't find anything either

If worse comes to worst I can create rain my test age if you wanna try reverse engineering it

Hmmm, the thing is, I don't even know what I'm supposed to look for in the PRPs. So unless you manage to export two identical versions of the same Age, one with a following emitter and one in which it's static, I don't know if it would help me much. At worse, I'll use a simple follow mod, which should do the trick. Thanks anyway.


I'll keep poking at the particle emitter, try the FollowMod, and see what I can figure out.

it might make more sense to have it target the camera instead of the player, but that depends on your usage

Hehe, this reminds me a funny detail: while particle systems may follow the avatar (or the camera, I'm not sure which), they still don't follow DynamicEnvMap (which are used for reflections). So, if you were to look through a DynamicEnvMap, you'd see that particles are emitted only around you, and not in the whole Age.
For instance, I did some tweaking in Noloben to have the lens on top of Esher's lab to not show the Keep door, but instead... show the lab roof on which I was standing, as seen from near the Keep door.

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one of the max exports keeps on kicking out a texture file which creates a few java errors
I found a way around it but its proving to be quit the challenge

You mean, when converting the Age to CC with Drizzle ? If that's Drizzle-related, I might be able to figure out what's wrong. Feel free to post the error message it shows...