Particles & light

[Coffee]

Hello,

The is probably a really dumb question but i'm new to all this particle stuff...

Do I have to use some lighting for my particles to show up or can i make them the source of light?
I'm trying to make a kind of blow tourch effect following the outline of some text. + I still don't really know how to texture it properly but thats a different question ;P or is it?

Cheers,
Coffee.

[richpr]

Read this (http://www.newtek.com/freestuff/lwhelp/content/015_volumetrics/007_volumetrics_hv.htm) and then make something with a white/blue gradient that is luminous...

So up the luminosity and add some glow (Advanced) while you're at it... Make sure glow is turned on in the global settings as well...

[Coffee]

Hey, thanks for the reply :)
I was starting to wonder if my question really was too dumb to be answered ;)

[Coffee]

I canné find the glow button cappt'n!? :(

[Coffee]

Kinda got everything sorted accept I can't see the glow button anywhere :P But I've encountered a new problem...

I wanted to try and add a flickering area light to follow the particles same motion path, although I haven't found how to attach it yet or if it needs it's own path¿ but! for some reason its not rendering @ all :confused: I set the bg object which the text is cut out of to a medium gray color & the area Light is set to 50%

I can't see any reason why it wouldn't render, maybe there's something i've missed but it's doing my head in :rolleyes:

Please please please can someone help me?

[Suede]

Is it just the light that does not render? In that case you can make it a point light instead of an area light and turn on volumetric light to accually see the beems. For the light to follow the partigon emitter press m (motion options) and parent the light to the emitter.

[Coffee]

All I can say is... Doh!

The main problem with the lighting was that i made everything too small, which it didn't seem to like much. So i've basically started everything from scratch. :rolleyes:

Thanks Suede, thats an excellent idea :) & has given me an idea too :) although for this part i prefer the look of an area light.

Is it generally better to use partigons than particles then?
Or would i be able to add some glow to the particles if they were partigons as i can't seem to find the glow option for mi particles.



Coffee.

[Coffee]

Right, forgetting my last post (appart from thanking Suede of course)... sprites are grrrrrreat :)

I re-thought how this scene was going to look & got the idea from watching mission impossible. I've decided to make a burning fuse/rope kind of effect following the text outline, which over all looks a bit nicer :) I added an HV sprite as a burning flame and a Null with an Emitter attached & streched the particles to give them a burning trail effect.
I've also tried to add some smoke by adding a disolved HV volume with some turbulance surrounding the particles (just a cloud). I am wondering thought, how to make the smoke look as though it's blowing out from the center flame & to also maybe give it some gravity?

Does anyone know how i could achieve this effect?


Yours,
Coffee.

[Coffee]

^

[Coffee]

One thing I didn't mention above is there's a small light to the right, just gives the cloud some shadow and makes the flame & sparks a little brighter.

Still having a problem with this smoke business, i've changed it to a emmiter, size wise starts small moves left a little inscreasing size & de-disolves and then disolves the further it gets away. The only trouble with this is when it spits out a new particle/smoke cloud, it appears too suddenly & when animated appears very jumpy :(

:confused:


Hope that makes some sense :P