[Bf-funboard] Particle groups

[Chris Burt]

I second that. In fact, there needs to be a lot of thought done about 
the current design and implementation of particle systems. Lots of good 
ideas could come from discussions with users like this that push the 
current system to its limits. I myself have often thought that particle 
systems should should have the option of being created by an "emitter 
object" instead of a mesh. This way the emitter object could be 
duplicated, IPO'ed etc with particle system data attached to it much the 
same way materials are now. I did a little work on the UI of this in the 
wiki here:

http://wiki.blender.org/pub/Blenderdev/ParticlesIA/particles_panel.png

The obvious idea is that particles become a data set just like every 
other aspect of blender. This would make working with large numbers of 
emitters somewhat trivial. Just my 2 cents..

Regards,
--Chris

Tom M wrote:
> Saw this request in the forums and it seems like a good idea,
> 
> [QUOTE]Basically what I want is a way to easily duplicate complex
> particle systems (where you are using more than one emiter to make the
> right effect), have them grouped and simply tell Blender, "I want this
> particle system to play here, here, and here and play it back at these
> points in time."
> 
> In other words I want particle systems in Blender to work the the same
> way that it works in video games, where you just say, "Explosion
> happens here", and it will make an instance of your particle system
> there.
> 
> Otherwise, which is the way it works now, I have to select all the
> particle systems, duplicate them, and then change the start and stop
> times of every single one of them. For the scene that I'll be working
> on in the future, we are talking about hundreds of bullets hitting
> walls and making chunks of rock and sparks fly everywhere. Multiply 4
> (which is the number of emiters to make the blast), by 100, and you
> get the idea. Not fun. That's hard to manage and will make a bit of a
> mess.[/QUOTE]
> 
> LetterRip
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