[Tutorial][Image-Heavy] HOW-TO use the Particle Editor aka... The CAULDRON !

Ok. What have we in front of our eyes ?

The color tab will change... the colors of your emitter.

The color interpolation Texture will change the color of the emitter. Iy's apng file with a height of 1. So you can have a solid color or somecolor from a color to another or crazy colors.

The diffuse/Alpha texture is the shape of the particles.

Render order is in what order each emitter/beam must be rendered (behind/in front of everything or in between)

Render technique: by default the partciles will be renderd as if they where in front of your point of view. You can see it if you clic with the middle button ont the grid on the right then move your mouse and clic "play". The particles will be the same.

If you choose something like XZplane the emitter will always be renders parallel to that plane. I don't know what additive/exclusive do. It seem to change how the colors are rendered (like adding colors to another)

Emitter is indefinite will create a loop with the emitter. Just try it, and clic play. You'll see that the emitter you selected is still playing, even after the particles are no longer rendered.

I don't know what Enable depth bias do.

Next, keyframe ! (hint : that's where the emitter will be rendered, it's size, it's rotation)

EDIT : it took me some time to create that tutorial. If noone is interested I won't continue so far ^__^ If you find my tuto usefull say it. If you don't find it usefull say it also

Very useful, please continue.

You're kidding right? That's a really easy to understand tutorial. Now we really an Elemental Modding Wikia so this doesn't get lost in the new threads. Perhaps you should change [Graphics] to [Tutorial] in the title?

I wish I would have reaad this before yesterday. Spent the whole day making sunshines for my cities.

Here we have the keyframe "Sets". A lot of options to tinker with.

But don't forget you have a slider, more options are hidden :

You can see 3 options : Time, Value and variation.

What would you seek first ?

First : Value. That is the value of the set you have selected.

Second : Variation. It applies a random value to value. For instance if you set value to 10 and variation to 2 then you will get values between 10 - 2 and 10 + 2

Third : Time. It's when on the timeline the set will be as expected. In fact the game will calculate transition frames. If you set a keyframe to start at 5 the game will create some "small" version of the keyframe at 1, then another small (but less) at 2 then another small (but even less) at 3, etc. and at 5 you have your keyframe as intended.

Time was the trickiest one to understand and I'm still not sure to have fully understood it. So if youhave a better explanation, feel free to share it with us

Here you can see where you add keyframes. They are on a per-set basis. So Direction X can have 2 or 3 keyframes, but not direction Y (unless to create them)

You can have different values for (Time, value, variation) for each keyframe

Ok, if you've read until now you should have at least 12 INT.Ready for another point of INT ?

Now comes the list of all the keyframe sets. I will now consider yourself at least a bit familiar with the buttons and that you know how to use a slider ^__^

Last part about emitters (Beam will be for another day :p)

Keyframe sets !

Let them coming !

Direction X, Y or Z. X, Y and Z are the reference to the three axes. You can choose in which direction particles will go. Strangely you can only set the "VALUE" between -1 and 1. Variation will still be able to let you get high values (try something like value 1 and variation 50)

Acceleration : self-explanatory.

Spawn offset and Emitter pos (X Y Z) : emitter pos is where your particles will start. The offset is an offset from the emitter pos. So the game will calculate like this : the emitter pos, then it applies the offset.

Speed : absolutly no idea. I tried a lot of values but it didn't seemed to change anything. Maybe it's ties to the way it's render (the default one will always render it in front of the user)

Start scale : initial size of the particle

End scale : final size of the particle at its end-life (very important to understand that)

The particle will go from start to end in "Particle Lifetime" seconds. So if you set a high value for the lifetime, the particle will change size slowly (because it has a lot of time between start and end). With a low lifetime, the particle will change really fast.

Initial rotation (you can use negative values) :it's not a movement ! It's just to say how the particle must be rotated at start.

Rotation rate : movement. You can use negative values to go clockwise. It's in radian/sec

Particle lifetime is how long the particle will stay rendered.

Spawn rate : VERY IMPORTANT. It's how many particles are rendered per second. You must understand that an emitter is like a firestorm, it will always fire new particles.

HINT : with a spawn rate of 10 you'll have a hard time to see what your emitter look like. HEre are some values to see what will be the exact effect.

FIRST : set Direction X Y Z, Acceleration X Y Z, Spawn offset and emitter pos X Y Z at zero. Then set start scale and end scale at 100. Set initial rotation to 0, same for rotation rate. Set particle lifetime to 1. You're almost done. Then set the emitter duration (you know, in the upper windows with trigger time and duration) to 10.

Now you can start doing some changes. Trying to make things rotate, move, change size, add keyframes, then set spawn rate to 10 to see what it will be for real.

Have a nice modding

Next, beams !