Saturday, September 17, 2011

2013 HELP: Particle effects. Smoke, fire, flies, snow, butterflies

Smoke, fire, flies, snow, butterflies
-
Those are just a few of the effects you can get from the LSL particle system. And you can use it without knowing how to script.  Some more effects: blood, dust, explosions,  gas, smoke, sparks, spray, steam, waterfalls, waves.
-
Puff of smoke-particle effect
-
The particle system produces things that are seen but don't exist as objects on the parcel and don't put any load on the simulator.  They are created by the software and graphics boards on the local computer.  They do load the local computer, but that is an individual issue.  If your computer is not up to the load, you simply set your viewer to limit the number of particles it will generate.
-
Here are some things people do with the particle system.  
-
Float a sign
-
The upper sign is created by the particle system.  It will float slowly upward and then vanish.  It exists only as a texture in the poster below it.  There are several such textures.  The script in the poster cycles through whatever textures are in the contents, releasing one image every minute or two.  The interval is controlled by a setting in the script.  
-
The floating images attract more attention than would a static poster, and multiple images add variety to the presentation.
-
Fireflies by the particle system
-
These fireflies appear, float down to the ground and bounce upwards.  Under script control, they appear only at night.  The abundance is controlled by settings in the script
-
Fire from the particle system
-
The fire is made of particles that move rapidly upwards and change color.  Some fire settings change the particles from orange to grey or black smoke.
***** ***** ***** 
Caution.  Brain freeze hazard!
-
Brain freeze: Post -traumatic stress syndrome resulting from excessive exposure to school.  On exposure to large amounts of information, the obedience systems of the brain respond, "You can't seriously expect me to learn all that."  Whereupon the brain locks up and learns nothing.
-
There is a lot more to know about the particle system than most people want to know.  The Zen protection against brain freeze is achieved by the Geek defense.  Geeks never really learned obedience in school, so the geek reaction is, "Lotta stuff here.  Let me find part of it I need to figure out so I can do what I want to do."
-
Note that the Geek defense calls for knowing what you want to do.  If you are just starting to learn about the particle system, what you want to do is find out what you can get the particle system to do and what you might want to do with it.
-
To explore particles, you might start with the particle library.

-
To start working with particles, get one of the following scripts or an object running a one of them.  .
These scripts are annotated, so you can see what each parameter does and how to change it. The annotations are not always clear about what the parameters will do, so you have to do test mods ane see what you get.  

There is a box in the Hobo Welcome Kit that runs one of these scripts to produce purple blobs. It is specifically intended to help people get started with the particle system .  You can get a copy of the Hobo Welcome Kit  by clicking  a poster-giver at this location  
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Cookie/141/115/22
***** ***** ***** 
Background


*****
  • What do we do in Virtual Worlds? 
  • Search on page with Google Chrome: Ctrl+f, search bar upper right 
  • Google search this blog, column on right
  • or put site:virtualoutworlding.blogspot.com at the end of the search terms
  • Annotated screen shots made with Jing
  • Creative Commons License, attribution only.
  • Second LifeLindenSLurl, and SL are trademarks of Linden Research Inc.
  • This blog is not affiliated with Second Life or anything else.  
  • Ads are  from Google
-
  

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.