Particle Tuner Wishes

[Joelaff]

Here are some things we would benefit from with the Particle Tuner.

* A test for the position of a particle. So we could delete all particle below 0 Z, for instance without a more expensive distance to object test.

* A Multiply action, rather than an Increase By or Decrease By. We could set a particle size to 50% (0.5*) of its original value. Or we could have particles slow down 5% per step, etc.

* A method to make actions happen per unit of time rather than per step so we can change the steps per frame without adjusting things. (If this is already the case, then I may misunderstand how it works, as I have not tested it directly.)

* A ONCE function that would only apply the action to a particle one time. This way we could (for instance) set different emitters of Foam to different RGB colors, test based on the color, and set the scale of the Foam particles independently for each emitter. Of course I guess having a scale setting in the emitters would be nice too.

* An Undo for when you delete or replace tests, as we still find it difficult (confusing) to remove a specific test from a complex string of ANDs and ORs.



Thanks for listening.

[Joelaff]

This does beg the question about the Increase By and Decrease By actions.

Does Increase By 0.1 means multiply by 1.1 or does it mean add 0.1 Units?
Does Decrease By 0.1 mean multiply by 0.9 or does it mean subtract 0.1 Units?

I am starting to think it is the former cases. To me the word Increase means Add and Decrease means Subtract. So I am getting a little confused. I like the idea of normalized values and multiplication.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

But but but... I remember I spent quite long on undo/redo for the tuner expressions in Max and Maya. Are they not working now?

Increase and decrease mean addition and subtraction - there's no multiplication currently. I think I deliberately left it out, bur gotta check my notes why it wouldn't play well with the other things.

As for the position test, again gotta check the code, writing form the phone right now, but I think using a distance to an object would be easier to setup because it's more visual, so I guess this is why I left the position out. It will be very easy to add position xyz though.

I gotta double check the code for the other questions, will be back with more answers tomorrow morning. Cheers!

[Joelaff]

But but but... I remember I spent quite long on undo/redo for the tuner expressions in Max and Maya. Are they not working now?

Let me try that again. I thought I deleted part of the expression-- the wrong part because I can't figure out how to delete the right part), and then I thought I couldn't get it back.

Increase and decrease mean addition and subtraction - there's no multiplication currently. I think I deliberately left it out, bur gotta check my notes why it wouldn't play well with the other things.

As for the position test, again gotta check the code, writing form the phone right now, but I think using a distance to an object would be easier to setup because it's more visual, so I guess this is why I left the position out. It will be very easy to add position xyz though.

I gotta double check the code for the other questions, will be back with more answers tomorrow morning. Cheers!

Multiply seems to be easier to control, and would carry no matter how you changed the other variables-- like shrink these particles to 1/10th their original size would then auto-magically work if the original particle were 1cm or 1m in diameter. I'm sure you get the idea

I figured position XYZ would be much faster to test then proximity to an object.

Thanks.