particle path madness

[lord]

can someone please explain this madness to me.

Why is it- if I wish to have particles follow a path, and I want the particles to start emmitting at a fixed frame which is not 0 that I need to offset the Windpaths keyframes by the particles start frame?
That's just plain silly and bloody counter intuitive. Took me bloody ages to figure it out too.

Imagine that I now wish to change the start time for the particles, not only do I have to have a million bloody floating panels open I also have to go and change the WindPaths keyframes again.

or am I missing something obvious and simple here?

I don't even know if what I just said makes sense?

:mad:

[Beamtracer]

It does sound crazy that the wind must also be offset. I haven't yet had a situation that I needed to do it, but I'll remember your solution when I do!

Using winds to make particles flow along a path is a really clunky way, and really hard to get control of things. It'll be good if Lightwave can one day use real paths to direct particles, so we don't have to use winds. You can also use bones to do it.

[wizlon]

Beam you can do this already in Lightwave - here's the scene file -

[lord]

'spose there's nothing wrong with that method really-

Still the fact that you need to offset the keyframes of the wind path if you want the particles to start at any frame other than 0 is maddening and not exactly obvious....

In retrospect it may not be offseting exactly as having the wind path start at frame 0? perhaps.

hmmmm.....