How To Make A Animated Particle In Hammer

Tutorial Alphabetize:
[ame="http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?p=120891#post120891"]#one - Fireballs[/ame]

[ame="http://forums.tf2maps.net/showpost.php?p=121095&postcount=7"]#2 - Installing your .PCF file[/ame]

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So I idea I'd kickoff this series of particle editor tutorials with something fast, piece of cake and fun. A burn down ball.
Unremarkably though when you lot come across tutorials for beginners for applications, they go through the interface and what everything does. Merely Ive decided to skip that tiresome part and just jump right to the fun, and eventually, you'll learn what everything does. This is what you should have if you lot've followed this tut correctly.

So lets go started. Starting time matter you might want to know is how to get-go the particle editor for TF2.

Go to your game properties and add this line to the launch options

Close information technology down and start the game. Dont forget tho, when the game has started, go to tools and choose the particle editor.

Go alee and go to File, and printing New. This will create a blank .PCF. A PCF file is the file that contains all the particle systems.

And so this is probably what you lot should see right now. If not, you've already done something bad, so get back and read again. ​

So, allow'south kickoff so. Press, Create in the Particle System Browser window. Enter a name of your liking, I decided to use Fireball_main. This proper name will also be the name you lot will use in hammer to use the particle.

When you've created your particle arrangement, go ahead and press it once to select information technology. When y'all've selected information technology, you lot can change information technology'south properties, and other absurd stuff. Yous tin can navigate through the other properties by clicking on the drib downwardly menu.​

The very basic

backdrop you lot need for any particle are the following;

1. A emitter, can be found in the Emitter menu
2. render_animated_sprites, tin can exist institute in the Renderer menu, and is needed to render the particle
3. Lifetime random, tin can be constitute in the Initializer menu
4. Blastoff Fade and Disuse, can be plant in the Operator carte du jour
5. Move Basic, tin besides be found in the Operator carte du jour. And this is needed for any dynamic particle.

To add a aspect to ane of the properties, y'all correct click and press Add. It looks like this.

A new window pops up, this is where you select the attribute. On the image, I'm adding a emitter. For this case, a fireball, you'll need to add emit_continuously. This means that particles will continuously be created in this particle organisation

When you've added the emitter, you might notice how the particle count goes from 0 to thou pretty fast, without y'all seeing anything. This is why we need a renderer, so we can actually see the particle.

Go to the Renderer carte and add the render aspect I mentioned before (render_animated_sprites). It doesn't matter if the material we are gonna use for the particle is blithe or not, this is the basic render attribute you desire for the particles to testify up.

So now that you added the render attribute, yous will see a white box in the preview. This is the default material for the particle. You'll also detect that its simply standing there, doing zip, well, thats because nosotros oasis't added any other attributes needed in the other menus. Lets do it!​

Just first, lets change the material to a animated burn down material. Become to the properties menu and find a animated fire texture

A animated texture always looks like this in the preview​

Now let's quickly go back to the emitter and modify the Charge per unit value, from 1000 to 20. This value tells the game how many particles per second should be created. This is why you should be really conscientious so you don't get besides many particles to avert lag.
Now let's go dorsum to the Renderer. Change the value animation_rate to 0.ix. This just tells the speed of the animation of the animated material we selected.

Get to the Initializer menu and Add these attributes;

• Lifetime random, tells the game how long one particle should be alive, before decaying.
• Colour Random, the colour of a particle.
• Position Within Sphere Random, decides where, within a sphere a particle should be spawned. If you practise not accept a "Position within.." attribute in your particle, it will spawn at the 0 0 0 cords in the map its used in.
• Radius Random, size of a particle.
• Rotation Random, rotation of a particle.

If yous where to zoom in, in the preview window correct now, y'all would see a very small fireball. But this is not exactly what we want to attain. Then become ahead and alter these values in the attributes.

Lifetime random
Lifetime_min - 1
Lifetime_max - ii
Colour random
Color 1 - 255 223 95 255
Color 2 - 255 187 120 255
Position Within Sphere Random
distance_max - v
Radius random
radius_min - 8
radius_max - x

Basically, you lot have your fireball at present. But we aren't washed quite even so. Go to the Operator menu and add these attributes;

• Alpha fade and Decay, fades the particle and removes them. Reads from lifetime random.
• Movement Bones, basic movement.
• Radius Scale, scale the size of a particle afterward it has been spawned.

Change these values in them;

Movement Bones
gravity - 0 0 l
Radius Scale
radius_end_scale - 3

And there you become. You should accept something that looks decent enough like a fireball. But if you take the performance trouble away you can e'er change the emitter rate value to, say, 200 and it will look even move like a fireball. Only you deceit apply anything like that ingame without anyone lagging.

At present go endeavor some stuff and play with the properties of the fireball to get a better hang of things!

Source: https://tf2maps.net/threads/the-big-particle-editor-tutorial.10506/

Posted by: petershilestered.blogspot.com

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