[Particles] Weather Effects with Collisions!

[YM]

So valve fixed up per-map particles in tf2 already?? :O

 

[eerieone]

works for me, renamed and deleted everything that might confuse the system and fired my map up, rain with collision was working like a blast

 

[Psy]

I've updated the first post with instructions.

 

[Urban]

Thanks for this, i was stuck for ages using the brush based rain until i found this post.

 

[Ninjilla]

I put the manifest and .pcf in my particles folder, but it still says "attempting to create anonexisting particle, "env_rain_001_collision" or something around those lines.

 

[NovaSilisko]

Oh god yes.

 

[Psy]

I put the manifest and .pcf in my particles folder, but it still says "attempting to create anonexisting particle, "env_rain_001_collision" or something around those lines.

If the rain still works you can safely ignore it.

 

[Ninjilla]

The rain does not work, which is my problem. The correct folder is Source SDK_contest > tf > particles right? I placed the .pcf in there, replaced the other manifest, and I assume thats all I need to do to get the collision particles working.

 

[Psy]

You've renamed the manifest and placed it in your maps folder, right?

 

[Ninjilla]

Ah, no I did not. I thought that was only if you wanted it pakrat'd and sent to others. Thanks

 

[luckyg]

right ive followed everything you have said but have ran into a problem,

i put the rain_with_collision.pcf and particles_manifestinto the tf/particles

i also renamed the particles_manifest (mymapname_particles) and put it in tf/maps folder

i then created the info_particle_system and set it to env_rain_001_collision but when i load up my map nothing happens

i opened up the console and saw a few error messages (see the image below) i'm not sure if i needed to use pakrat just to use for me to see it,

any ideas on what i'm doing wrong :huh:

EDIT: image turned out smaller than i thought so you cannot read what it says easily, it says

"Attempting to create unknown particle system 'env_rain_001_collision' "

 

[Psy]

I'm pretty sure you don't need the particle_manifest in the particle folder if you already have one in your maps folder.

 

[BagOfChips]

Do you have to pakrat with every compile?

 

[Psy]

No. You do not need to Pakrat unless you are planning to distribute the map.

 

[BagOfChips]

Cool.

Not working. I followed the readme's "Simply place both 'particles_manifest.txt' and 'rain_with_collision.pcf' into your 'tf/particles/' folder."

No rain from those particle infoz

 

[Terr]

I started poking at the particle editor today and it's pretty neat. I don't know about the performance implications, but it looks like you can use a control-point (like some info_target entity) to set the distance the rain falls before automagically being culled by a horizontal plane, which might be useful for large flat areas.

 

[Icarus]

I started poking at the particle editor today and it's pretty neat. I don't know about the performance implications, but it looks like you can use a control-point (like some info_target entity) to set the distance the rain falls before automagically being culled by a horizontal plane, which might be useful for large flat areas.

If this works, we can have the same effect, but with higher FPS than real-time collision detection?

 

[Terr]

I haven't compared the performance differences (this is all very very new to me) but from a general programming perspective I'd imagine setting a distinct horizontal cutoff plane at compile-time (although alterable at runtime) might be a tad more efficient than even sporadic collision detection, at the expense of being just a plane through a given point with a pre-set orientation.

I'm talking about the Operator "Cull when crossing plane" set to use a Control Point to position things.

If you had rain and an outdoor elevator, you could use this method to dynamically prevent rain from going "Below" the platform, even as it rises or falls.

For an interesting effect, there's an operator "set control point to player". Combined with offset controls, this can let you create particles which disappear the instant they pass "below" player's eyeballs. (The plane is being constantly redefined relative to the player's position.)

It may be possible to use another control point to scale the horizontal area that particles are generated in, but I haven't found it yet. Maybe some of the weird "Remap distance between control points to scalar" operators, but I'm not sure how to chain those yet.

Edit: Looks like more of the "Remap" operators only allow you to modify particle properties rather than, say, the properties of the emission scheme. There might still be some way to do it with child particles and invisible parents, but...

Also, a flat plane for rain would work fine as long as the insides of your buildings didn't have visible arches and rafters. I wish we could seed a particle system with inputs that aren't simply control point vectors :/

 

[Ninjilla]

Cool.

Not working. I followed the readme's "Simply place both 'particles_manifest.txt' and 'rain_with_collision.pcf' into your 'tf/particles/' folder."

No rain from those particle infoz

Yeah, the readme needs to be updated. I think how I fixed it is I put the .pcf under teamfortress 2/tf/particles and sourceSDK_content/tf/particles (though Im sure thats not needed) and the manifest under maps.

 

[benbrooks]

Just a quick request, Could you possibly do the same for the Viaduct snow?

<3 forever if you do!

I tried messing around with it, but couldn't get the particles falling ingame, They just froze in mid air :/