Controlling hyperspace particle effect location on mesh

from Sins Forums

Hi all,

This could be a combination of brain freeze or overt laziness... but either way I'm trying to figure out how to control where the hyperspace particle effect appears.

For example, a capital ship begins to phase jump.. and the swirly blue particle effect appears just off the front bow of the ship.

Where do you determine the x,y,z of that particple effect? I can't find anything in the mesh, which would seem to be the most obvious location for it.

modding
4,928 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

The particle effect is always spaned in the center. So if you want to change the position, you either change the position for the center (not recommended) or alter the particle effect so that the particles are spawned somewhere else, the problem with this method is that you can only have one effect per race (unless you make an ability which applies the effect while phasejumping).

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

So you're saying that the mesh offset from center (rather than the "center" entry in the mesh file) determines the hyperspace charging particle effect location?

All the meshes I've played with are centered at 0,0,0 when using 3DS, and still somehow manage to generate the hyperspace charging particale at some positive x offset (e.g. 0,0,1000).

Let me dig up a screenshot of the issue...

 

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

How much experience do you have with the particle effects? What I meant was the center entry or dummy point(3DS)/hardpoint (XSI). Also there is a difference between the effect, and particles.

The effects center is the same as the meshs Center meshpoint and if the particles are set to spawn at 0,0,1000 in the effect they will also be spawned at 0,0,1000 from the center meshpoint.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Ok I see what you mean.. the HyperspaceChargeUp.particle defines an x offset of 700, and each Player(Race).entity refers to the same HyperspaceChargeUp.particle file.

Hence, all ships in a race use the generic HyperspaceChargeUp.particle which is set to be 700.

Hence, if you have a ship with a mesh greater than 700 the hyperspace charge up particle effect spawns inside the mesh, rather than in front of the bow.

So what we need is the  chargeUpEffectName "HyperspaceChargeUp" shifted from the Player(Race) entity and to be an entry in every ship entity file... this way we could customize the location of the hyperspace chargeup effect by referencing a customized .particle.


Man, I spent like an hour agonzing over mesh bounding box dimensions, gravity points etc trying to look for the solution in the mesh itself *sigh*!

Stardock... you there? :)