Tutorial: How to create Basic Trail Particles

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "Tutorial: How to create Basic Trail Particles"

Oswin Wiggins
5 years ago
Views:

1 Tutorial: How to create Basic Trail Particles This tutorial walks you through the steps to create Basic Trail Particles. At the end of the tutorial you will have a trail particles that move around in a sphere. This is a beginner level tutorial for those who are curious about jumping into the Particle Editor. You ll learn how to create parent and child relations for particles and also have them orbit around their own emitter. You will learn how to do the following: Create a Parent particle which orbits around itself. Connect a child particle to the parent and have it spawn particles following it. Play with different settings to have fun and experiment Prerequisites Before going forward with this tutorial, I highly recommend that you check out Basic Particle Parameters so you have brief knowledge of the Particle Editor. This isn t a must but I d recommend you briefly check out Import/Export Assets to the Particle Editor tutorial. You must have the following before starting this tutorial: [Basic Particle Parameters (Required)] [Import/Export Assets to Particle Editor (Recommended)] Step 1: Setting the Scene to Night To setup our scene so your particles look better, let s turn it into Night time. To Set your scene to Night 1. Open up Lumberyard and open one of the Getting Started levels, Load your own level or Create a New Level 2. Open up the Time of Day Editor by going to View > Open View Pane > Time of Day or by clicking on the Icon in the Editor Toolbar. 3. Locate the Timeline bar inside Time of Day. It s at the very bottom in the middle. Drag the slider all the way to 00:00. You ll see that it s really dark in your level now. You have now setup the night time scene for your particle adventure! Step 2: Create the Parent Particle The first step in the tutorial is to create a parent particle that orbits around itself. The child particle will follow these and create particle trails later. To the Parent Particle:

2 1. Open up the Particle Editor by clicking View > Open View Pane > Particle Editor or by clicking on the Icon in the Editor Toolbar. 2. Under Libraries > Right click on Level > Add New > Add Particle or click on the Add Particle button if you have no other particles created. Name the new particle Trail_Parent. Click and drag the Trail_Parent particle into your scene. Move up the Particle from the scene so you give room for it at the bottom. 3. With the scene set to night the particles can be a little hard to see. To brighten the particles open the Lighting Attributes > Diffuse Lighting to 0.1 > Emissive Lighting to Back to the Particle Editor, open up the Emitter Attribute > Make Count to 3. We don t want too many particle parents right now and keeping a low number helps visualize things better. Open up the Size Attribute > change the Size X to 0.3. This is to make the particles visually more manageable. 5. Open up the Movement Attribute > Open up the Target Attraction sub menu > Select the Target Parameter which will open up a roll down menu, Select OwnEmitter. Check Orbit parameter On and set Radius to You ll see that nothing is happening with the Particles. This is because we need to enlarge the space for particles to spawn in. Open up Emitter Attributes > Random Offset to 2.0 on all axis (X, Y, Z) (2.0, 2.0, 2.0). You now see Particles orbiting around its emitter. YAY! 7. Check on Orient to Velocity. This way you can see the arrows point to the direction it s going. The particles are now dying too fast so let s increase their lifetime. Open up Particles Attributes > Set Particle Life Time to 10.

Trail_Parent Particle Attributes Re-Cap 1. Emitter Count - 3 Random Offset X, Y & Z to 2.0 Orient to Velocity On 2. Particles Particle Lime Time 10 3. Lighting Diffuse Lighting 0.

3 Trail_Parent Particle Attributes Re-Cap 1. Emitter Count - 3 Random Offset X, Y & Z to 2.0 Orient to Velocity On 2. Particles Particle Lime Time Lighting Diffuse Lighting 0.1 Emissive Lighting Size Lock Aspect Ratio - On Size X Movement Target Attraction i. Target Set to OwnEmitter ii. Orbit On iii. Radius 2.0 You have now created an orbiting parent particle! Step 3: Create the Child Particle After you [created a parent particle], you will [create a child particle]. This child particle will follow the parent particle s movement, which is the orbiting, and spawn beautiful sparkling particles as it follows. To Create a Child Particle 1. Under Libraries, Right click Trail_Parent > Add New > Add Particle and name it Trail_Child. Click on Trail_Child you ve just created. You ll see the default emitter spawning the arrow particles pointing upwards. Now let s change the texture of this particle. 2. Open Particles Attribute > Go to the Texture Parameter > Click on to open up the File Browser. Go to your Textures > lights > lumberyard_flares folder and select the file flare02.dds then click Open. Your Arrows show now be replaced with the flare02 texture. Note: For step 2, you could choose another texture you like better if you d like. 3. Again, with the scene set to night the particles can be a little hard to see. To brighten the particles open the Lighting Attributes > Diffuse Lighting to 0.1 > Emissive Lighting to Flare02.dds was meant to be an Additive texture, so let s change that in Blend Type. In the Blend Type parameter, Click on the AlphaBased and change it to Additive. You ll now see the light part of the texture only and not the black we had previously. 5. Now let s get better movement for these particles. Open Movement Attribute > Set Speed to 0. Open Size Attribute > Set Size X to 0.1. Now we need to make a parent/child relationship for these particles. 6. In the child particle, we ll tell it to follow the parent particle. Make sure you have Trail_Child selected. Go to Emitter Attribute > Spawn Indirection to ParentStart.

4 7. If you don t see any changes, you might have to enable and disable the child particle. To do this, simply uncheck then check the checkmark next to Trail_Child under Libraries. You should now see particles spawning and being left off where the Parent particles were. 8. So to simplify our visual, let s make this less hectic by spawning just one parent particle. Select Trail_Parent under Libraries > Open Emitter Attribute > Set Count to Now let s go back to Trail_Child. Select Trail_Child. Open Size Attribute > Set Size X and Y to 0.1. Open Emitter Attribute > Set Count to 100. Open Movement Attribute > Set Speed to 1. Expand the Speed parameter by clicking on the triangle, you should see Random parameter that appears there. Set Random to You should be able to see the trail particles disperse more. You ll also see the particles pop off unattractively. Let s fix this. Open Size Attribute > Expand Size X > Look at the Particle Age line graph. Grab the end point (square icon) and drag it all the way down to the bottom. This will make the particle shrink in size as it reaches the end of its life. 11. Let s give these beautiful trail particles randomness in size so it s not all the same. In the expanded Size X parameters, set Random to 0.5. You ll see more variants in size which looks great. Let s let the particle live longer by giving it more Life Time.

5 12. Open Particles Attribute > Set Particle Life Time to 5.0. Let s give it more random Life Time so they don t all die at the same Life Time. Expand the Particle Life Time parameter to get to the Random parameter for it. Set Random to Let s now give the trails more colors! Open Particles Attribute > Click on the Color parameter which will open up the Color Picker. Pick whatever color you wish here. 14. Open Lighting Attribute > Set Diffuse Lighting to 0 > Set Emissive Lighting to 2. You ll now see the color you ve picked better than before. We have the basic trail particles! Now let s spawn more Trail_Parent particles. Select Trail_Parent Particle in the Libraries. Open Emitter Attribute > Set Count 5. You ll now see more parent particles spawn with trails following them. 15. The parent particle now looks out of place, so let s replace it with a texture. Open Particles Attribute > Go to the Texture Parameter > Click on to open up the File Browser. Go to your Textures > lights > lumberyard_flares folder and select any texture you like. You have now created a child trail particles that follow its parents movement. Trail_Child Particle Attributes Re-Cap 1. Emitter Spawn Indirection Parent Start Count Particles Particle Lime Time 5 Blend Type Additive Texture flare02.dds 3. Lighting Diffuse Lighting 0.1 Emissive Lighting Size Lock Aspect Ratio - On Size X 0.1 i. Random 0.5 ii. Particle Age Movement Speed 1.0 i. Random 0.5 Trail_Parent Particle Attributes Re-Cap 1. Emitter Count 5 2. Particles Texture flare02.dds Step 4: Experiment With basic functionality of the trail particles all done, feel free to explore and play with different settings as you d like. Here are some examples.

6 To Experiment with the trail particles try some of these settings 1. Make sure you have Trail_child selected. Let s play with Turbulence for example. Open Movement Attribute > Set Turbulence 3D Speed 1. You ll notice your child particles have turbulence to them. 2. Let s play with Velocity. Open Movement Attribute > Set Inherit Velocity to 0.1. You ll notice your child particles follow the velocity of the parent particle s movement more. 3. Let s play with Colors! Open Particles Attribute > Expand Color parameter so you can see Random > Set Random 1 > Expand Random so you can see Random Hue check box > Check the checkbox. Set the particle Color to White. You ll now see all different types of colors from the child trail particle because you set it to pick maximum amount of random Hues. 4. From here on out, I d recommend you play with all the nobs and sliders that Lumberyard s Particle Editor has to offer. Have fun with it and experiment to learn what some of these powerful parameters can do! Congratulations! You have successfully played around with the trail particle. Related Tasks and Tutorials Now that you have created trail particles, see what else you can add to your game. To dive deep into the Particle Editor capabilities and parameters, please refer to the Lumberyard Documentation page here:

Tutorial: Importing static mesh (FBX)

Tutorial: Importing static mesh (FBX) This tutorial walks you through the steps needed to import a static mesh and its materials from an FBX file. At the end of the tutorial you will have new mesh and