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253 lines
12 KiB
HTML
253 lines
12 KiB
HTML
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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN">
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<!-- saved from url=(0050)https://www.iddevnet.com/doom3/editor_particle.php -->
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<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
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<title>id.sdk [The Particle Editor]</title>
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<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css">
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</head>
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<body marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" topmargin="0" leftmargin="0">
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<table border=0 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 style="width: 100%; height: 99px">
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<tr>
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<td style="width: 171px"><img src="images/doom.jpg" style="width: 171px; height: 99px" alt=""></td>
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<td style="background: url(images/tile.gif)">
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<table border=0 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 width=600>
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<tr>
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<td style="height: 19px; background: url(images/sdk.gif) no-repeat"></td>
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<td rowspan=4 align=right><img src="images/id.gif" style="width: 42px; height: 99px" alt=""></td>
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</tr>
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<tr><td style="height: 29px; background: url(images/top.jpg) no-repeat"></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="height: 27px; background: url(images/middle.gif)" class="title"> Making DOOM 3 Mods : The Particle Editor</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="height: 24px; background: url(images/bottom.jpg) no-repeat"></td></tr>
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</table>
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</td>
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</tr>
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</table>
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<table border=0 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 style="width: 770px">
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<tr>
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<td colspan=2 style="background: url(images/boxtop.gif);"><img src="images/span.jpg" style="width: 397px; height: 20px; float: left" alt=""></td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td style="vertical-align: top; width: 152px; background: url(images/tileleft.gif)">
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<div class="leftMenu">
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<script src="menu.js"></script>
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</div>
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</td>
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<td class="mainContent">
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<p>
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<img src="images/editor_particle_a.png" align="right">
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The particle editor is fairly intuitive, so let's just go through
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it from top to bottom.
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</p><p>
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The first box selects the particle system that is being edited. New
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creates an empty particle system, save saves the current system, save as
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saves the system with a new name. Pretty simple stuff here.
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</p><p>
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Don't worry too much about Depth Hack, it's there to help solve some issue
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with depth sorting (drawing one particle on top of another), but you probably
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won't need to use it.
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</p><p>
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The big section in the middle is for editing the various stages of the particle
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effect. Most particle effects only have one stage, but you can really have as
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many stages as you want. Each stage is almost like an entire particle effect
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in itself, but all the stages share some common properties like attachment point
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and direction. The best demonstration of this is the particle effect on a smoking
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barrel. You see some normal black smoke, but a little bit of fire, and some little
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ashes that drift away with the smoke. This effect is created with three different
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stages (one for each of the effects I mentioned).
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</p><p>
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You can add a new stage by clicking the + button, and delete an existing stage
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by clicking the - button. The order of the stages does not matter. The H button
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will hide the stage, and the S button will show a hidden stage.
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</p><div class="subsection">How it looks</div>
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The first box on the right lets you select the material used for this stage. Each
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stage can only use one material, which is one reason why the smoking barrel had to
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use three different stages.
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<p>
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The Anim Frames and Anim Rate boxes allow you to specify 'film strip' animation for
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the particle. A really good example of this is in "barrelfire" stage 2. The material
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is 7 frames of a fire ball juxtaposed in a single texture. Anim Frames is set to
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7 so it turns it knows it's an animation. Anim rate is normally set to 0, in which
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case it runs through one cycle of the animation, but if it is not zero then the number
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specifies how many times it runs through the animation before the particle dies. For
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example, an anim rate of 2 will run through the animation twice before the particle
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dies.
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</p><p>
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The next box lets you set the surface color for the particle (normally this will change
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the color of the particle, but it depends on the material). You can also select entity
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color, in which case it will use the color of the entity that this particle stage
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is attached to. The fade color is the color the particle fades to over the course of
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it's life cycle. The fade color is used for both a specified color and for entity color.
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</p><div class="subsection">How it fades</div>
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Fade in % and Fade out % define the amount of time spent fading in and fading out. If
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"fade in" is set to 0.5 and "fade out" set to 0.0 then the particle will spend half it's
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life fading in, the other half it will be fully visible, then it will just disappear without
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fading out at all. Fade fraction is used to fade out the entire stage as a whole, and is
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mostly used for fading out muzzle smoke.
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<p>
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If Fade Fraction is set higher than 0, then any particles created past that point in the
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life of the stage will be extra faded. In the case of the muzzleSmoke particle, Fade
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Fraction is set to 0.85, which means the last 15% of the particles will be faded more than
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the rest (with the last particle being almost invisible). The "lifetime" of the stage is
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determined by Count which is described in more detail later.
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</p><div class="subsection">How it lives and dies</div>
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Bunching is used to squish the particles together. If the time is set to 10 seconds and
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bunching is set to 0.8 then all the particles will spawn in the first 8 seconds, then
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none will spawn for 2 seconds. Setting it to zero causes all the particles to spawn
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at once.
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<p>
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Count of course increases the number of particles in this particular effect.
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</p><p>
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Time sets the lifetime for a particle. The time is used for calculating all the fades,
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as well as for controling bursting as we have already seen. Time is a factor in almost
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all the equations dealing with particles.
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</p><p>
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Cycles sets how many times the stage will repeat. If it is set to zero then it repeats
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indefinately. Setting it to 5 will cause it to repeat 5 times, etc.
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</p><p>
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Time offset allows you to start a stage after some time has elapsed. This is useful if
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you have a multistage effect, but you don't want all the stages to start at the same time.
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</p><p>
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Dead time is the time after a particle dies before it respawns. You can create choo-choo
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train like effects where there's a puff of smoke, then a delay, then a puff of smoke, etc.
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</p><div class="subsection">The Gravity of Particles</div>
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<p>
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The slider underneath Time Offset and Dead Time controls how strong 'gravity' is for these
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particles. Negative numbers indicate 'up' whereas positive numbers indicate 'down'.
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Checking the "World Gravity" box indicates the gravity should be aligned with the world
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gravity, otherwise it is aligned with the normal (direction) of the particle emitter.
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</p><div class="subsection">Distribution</div>
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Distribution controls the area in which the particles are initially spawned. Rect, Cylinder,
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and Sphere select the shape of the spawn area, and XSize, YSize, ZSize change the size of the
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spawn area in each of the three axis. Ring (which is only available for cylinder and sphere)
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will cause the particles to form in a ring pattern. The number specifies the inner radius of
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the ring, the outer radius is defined by the size values above it. A value such as 3 to 6
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tends to yield pretty good results. Offset just moves the entire area over by some amount
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(this is most useful when creating a multi-stage effect). Unchecking random distribution
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will cause all the particles to spawn from the same place (at offset + [xsize, ysize, zsize])
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<div class="subsection">Direction / Orientation</div>
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Direction controls the direction the particles move in. The only two options are Cone and
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Outward. If Cone is selected then you can specify the size of the cone by specifying the
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Angle. The direction of movement will fall somewhere between -angle and angle. If Outward
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is selected then you can specify the Upward Bias. This value is added to the Z component
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after a random direction is chosen. The consequence is most particles will tend to travel
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in that direction.
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<p>
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Orientation controls which way the particles face. View makes the particles always face
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towards the player. This is normally the option that will be chosen. Selecting X, Y, or
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Z will cause the particle to be aligned to the X, Y, or Z axis respectively. There's not
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much reason to align to the X or Y axis but aligning the particles to the Z axis is useful
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for creating effects that affect the floor (such as the spawn in effect or some of the
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Archvile effects). The final option is Aimed. This option will cause the particles to
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face the player, but they will be stretched out. This can be used to make bullet tracers,
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wiggly worms, sparks, or just about anything else. When Aimed is selected, two more options
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are enabled: Trails and Time. Time controls how long the particle stretches (literally the
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particle is drawn from it's current position to it's position <var>time</var> seconds ago).
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Trails controls how many segments are drawn. The higher the number, the more 'curvy' the
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trail gets. Adding segments does not make the particle stretch longer, only increasing <var>time</var>
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does that.
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</p><p>
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Normally the every particle is rotated some random amount. Specifying the initial angle
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will cause all the particles to start of rotated the same amount (specifically, the amount
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specified in the Initial Angle box).
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</p><div class="subsection">Particle Behavior</div>
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The last section controls how particles act once they are spawned. There are four groups of
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values at the top, each one with a slider above and below it. The top slider controls the
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value the particle starts at, and the bottom slider controls the value the particle ends at.
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<p>
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For example, setting the top slider (which is the left box) to -75 and the bottom slider
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(which is the right box) to 0 in speed will cause the particles to start moving at -75
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units/second, but linearly slow down to 0 units / second over the life of the particle.
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</p><p>
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Another example is setting the start size to 0 and the end size to 20 will cause the particle
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to appear to grow, most smoke is done this way.
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</p><p>
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Changing the rotation value will change the particle rotation speed (not the rotation angle).
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</p><p>
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Changing the Aspect will change the width / height aspect ratio. The width is set to the size,
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and the height is set to size * aspect.
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</p><p>
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Bounds expansion lets you add some constant amount to the size of the bounding box surrounding
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the particle system. This is only needed if you encounter a weird situation where your
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particles are disapearing when you face a certain direction. What is actually happening is
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the particle system is getting clipped with the view frustum because the bounds is too small.
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This theoretically shouldn't ever happen, but in reality it sometimes does.
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</p><p>
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Custom path is the way to make your particles follow predefined patterns that would otherwise
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be impossible to do. Specifying a custom path will override the distribution and direction
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values set above. To use the custom path, select it from the box, then enter the parameters
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for the custom path in the box to the right. Most custom paths have some parameters to vary
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how the path behaves. Some have more than others. A brief description for the parameters
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comes up above the custom Params box when you select a custom path.
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</p><div class="subsection">Testing and Editing</div>
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The very last bit of buttons on the bottom is for testing the particles and for modifying
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particle emitters. A map has to be loaded before those buttons do anything. Clicking
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save .map after modifying some particle emitters will save those emitters to the .map file.
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<p>
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Hover over the TIMFS buttons to get a description for what they do.
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</p><p>
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Useful Tip: Clicking "Switch To Doom" will switch to the game window, but switching back
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to the editor can be tricky because your cursor disapears. The easy way to solve this
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is by binding a key to "editParticles" Press that key (I use P) and the edit particle
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window will come up (if it is already open, it will become focused).
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<br>
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</p></td>
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</tr>
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<tr>
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<td colspan="2" bgcolor="#CCCCCC"><img src="images/span2.gif" style="width: 397px; height: 8px; float: left;"></td>
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</tr>
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</tbody></table>
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<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="770">
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<tbody><tr>
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<td align="left" class="legalese">Copyright <20> 2004 <a href="http://www.idsoftware.com/">id software</a></td>
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</tr>
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</tbody></table>
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</body></html>
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