[Particles] Weather Effects with Collisions!

[Jazz]

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 :/

I would like this too!

 

[Psy]

It's coming. Hold on.

 

[Psy]

Updated! If a moderator could change the thread title to 'Weather Effects with Collision' that would be great.

 

[zpqrei]

Updated thread name.

 

[luckyg]

thanks alot for the snow collisions :woot:

 

[FlavorRage]

Thanks so much for the snow. Helps a TON.

 

[RavenStryker]

Hey Psy, I was wondering if you could edit the rain so it was just a rainfall without the sheets of rain coming down randomly, more or less like a sprinkle instead of a thunderstorm. Maybe a little smaller raindrops and have a few more drop in the area at a time. =D I'm really not a fan of the whole random sheets of rain that is happening. 1024 and 256 models with collision would be awesome!!! Thanks in advance if you could do this for me.

 

[Mick-a-nator]

O_O <-- me

I'll be sure to use this I'm sure. Can you tell us how you did it too? don't worry I've downloaded yours so I wont steal the idea I'm just interested in creating particles recently.

 

[Dr. Spud]

Snow collisions is laaaaggy! Tried it in haarp and it at least halves the framerate in the first area! And this is the cheap collisions where the snow disappears.

There's not really anything you can do, but it's worth noting.

 

[RavenStryker]

Ohh, I've figured out how to do it, and I have it on my map and the frames have yet to drop at all, still pegged at 60(v-sync enabled) maybe you have placed to many of them? They should be 1024 units apart. but with the way your map it setup it might be easier using the 256 size ones and having no collision cause you don't really have any small bridges or buildings in the middle of no where.

 

[Psy]

Snow collisions is laaaaggy! Tried it in haarp and it at least halves the framerate in the first area! And this is the cheap collisions where the snow disappears.

There's not really anything you can do, but it's worth noting.

Hmm. I think it really depends on how complex your geometry is but, then again, I've had no such performance drops in my map despite there being a lot of planes at varying angles and heights.

Anyway, I've sent an email to Robin asking how they've flagged the rain and snow particles as weather effects so I can do the same for my set of collisions.

 

[Psy]

Oh it is sad day!

Hi Aaron.
Unfortunately, right now they're hardcoded particle names, which doesn't help you much at all. We'll try to improve it so that you can mark your own effects as weather based.

Robin.

 

[Terr]

Preferably it would be per-info_particle_system, so that you could reuse different particles as weather and as non-weather effects.

 

[Psy]

In order to redeem myself with my messy collisions detection via traces, I decided to delve back into the particle editor and have a snoop around for a cheaper method. It seems I have found a better method. In fact, it's the method Terr found a few pages back.

I'll do a bit more investigating and testing then I'll post up a new file with a tutorial if neccessary.

 

[Terr]

If you use a second particle system entity as the control point, you get rain that disappears at the same place that splashes are created

If Valve added the right support for it, you could use a variety of particle control points to make pre-set realistic rain on all your angled roofs, but AFAIK that kind of hammer-based configuration isn't in there.

 

[Psy]

Now, now. Let's not get carried away.

I'm having trouble setting up a control point through Hammer. I use an info_target and name it 'cp1' then point 'Control Point 1' in my info_particle_system to 'cp1' and Hammer connects them together. However once I test it out in-game the particle system does not see the control point and so the culling plane doesn't exist and the rain simply falls through until the particles naturally decay.

Obviously manually setting the control point within the particle system works but I'd really like to get the info_target method working as people won't have to use the particle editor to adjust the height of the culling plane.

Any ideas? I'm looking for some way of seeing control points within a map using a console command to check that they're actually there and are connected properly.

 

[Psy]

It appears that my setup was fine. The problem is that the control point used for the culling plane applies to every instance of the particle system within the map. So even if you specify a uniquely named CP1 for each info_particle_system the engine will use the first one it finds. Bummer.

 

[Terr]

Dayum. Maybe it's a bug in how the entity is handled by the engine?

It can't be universal to the particle system: The medi-beam is a particle system with a different set of CPs (one is on the patient) for each medic using it...

 

[Psy]

Good point. I'll look into that as well as the advice offered from Valve.

 

[Bermuda Cake]

so is the name of the collision snow
env_snow_light_001_collision / collision cheap ?
Cos mine isn't working :O