Ps effects and sprites
blueman
Join Date: 2002-04-09 Member: 399Members
Join Date: 2002-04-09 Member: 399Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Need some help :)</div>Ive been testing around the PS (thx for the hlep plague) a bit and ive managed to understand its complexity (at the start its a bit confusing...:D ). Well. In some screenshots of the official maps ive seen the PS effects and they look marvellous (water drips, steam, etc...) and id like to know wut is the sprite used by the team for the steam effect, cause ive been using and testing some of the ones provided with the NSTR2 and i havent managed to arrive to the effect that ns_bast or ns_hera one have. by this i mean that when i create a steam effect flowing out of a pipe, the sprite gets from thinner to wider as it is "pumped" out of the pipe, but the sprite has the same "force" (i cant express it other way, sorry :\ ) all over its way, and then at a point it dissapears. In the official maps ive seen that this effect seems to fade as t gets bigger, lookin so much natural and nice.... can anyone help me (if youve understand me, of course... :\ )
Comments
Try playing with the "scale" and "particle life" functions
I think my settings for a similar PS were..
Sprite-Haze
Size-8
Scale 16.63
genrate 100
particle life- 2.8
maxparts 1000
velocity-box
parameters 25,99,-95,0,0,0,0
gamma 0.4
At least I think thats it..have a play around anyway, you'll get it eventually...
I finally got snow working the other day! Goes in the right direction and everything. Shame it was supposed to be a rain effect..ah well..
Good luck etc
thx.
ive also been testing with the water effects, its easier (well, i just did a drip thing, not rain) and it looks superb. i need to test around it more.
linkage incase...
<a href="http://www.valve-erc.com/resources/?page=tut_realsteam" target="_blank">http://www.valve-erc.com/resources/?page=tut_realsteam</a>
I would suggest parameters (for steam) more along these lines..
<b>Params</b>
Generation Shape - Point (so it comes out from one point..duh <!--emo&:)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'><!--endemo--> )
Generation Rate (Parts/Second) - 15 to 30 (any more and it looks too solid for steam
Particle Sprite - haze
Animation Frames in Sprite - 1
Maximum Particles - 300
Particle Size - 5 to 20 (depending on what size burst of steam you are going for)
System Lifetime - -1 (assuming you want it to last forever)
Particle Lifetime - (this one you have to play with to see how long you want the trail of steam to be.. good idea not to have it go <b>too</b> long if you don't plan on using gravity)
Starting Velocity Shape - blob (for a more natural look)
Starting velocity Params - (this depends on the direction you want it to go - but just keep in mind that it is x1,y1,z1,x2,y2,z2,0,0 [last two aren't used] - each particle will move in the x,y,z direction at a speed between x1 and x2, y1 and y2 etc etc. So if x1 = -15 and x2 = 15 it'll move along the x axis somewhere between -15 and 15 units per second - negative being one direction and positive being the other)
Scale Particle over lifetime - 5 to 10 (another performance note is that bigger particles generally have a bigger performance hit - for those who don't agree - test it out!<!--emo&;)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=';)'><!--endemo-->
Particle Max alpha - 0.5 (don't want the steam to be too solid now do we <!--emo&:)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':)'><!--endemo--> )
Render Mode - Additive (give it that see-thru sexy look)
<b>Flags</b>
Fade in - assuming it's from a pipe you don't want it to fade in
Fade out - Check this - you want it to look as though it is disapating
High-Detail Only - If you think it's gonna be a performance hog but not really a big gameplay element - check this too. (If it was fog that limited vision on purpose then you wouldn't want this on cause people can turn it off)
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I didn't mean to go on that long..but hopefully this will help...
Good points as usual Hanz..1000 is a crazy amount of particles, that will be changed, as it is I'm still sort of twiddling with the PS, trying to see what the limits are and how much they kill my fps etc..
They're just aesthetics, not vital elements so I imagine I'll set them to high detail only anyway..
Anyhow, my PC is laughably weak so if something runs ok on mine, it's hopefully gonna run great on anyone elses..
/me crusades on behalf of everyone too cheap to buy a decent PC
PS: spot on about the particle scale. Big particles freak my sytem out completely..