Comments on: Papervision "billboard" particles

By: sebastien

sebastien — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 12:44:13 +0000

hi Seb, first I’d like to congrate you for your great work… Is there a way for this code to work without library, I mean I’d like to create a Movie with code and then push it in parameter but I don’t know how to write it ?? I try to make a new Movie with the name param: “sphere” but it doesnt work I saw in your MovieAssetParticleMaterial class that you use “getDefinitionByName” so maybe we can’t do it without library but I dont use flash IDE how can I do ?

By: seb

seb — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 09:43:11 +0000

Hi Luke, yes this is currently the only way to do this. Oh and you can use the BitmapParticleMaterial too. They all need a little tidying up, and I’ll be looking at that soon.

Seb

By: Luke

Luke — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:37:13 +0000

OK will check that out. I’m pretty new to Papervision, so this might be a dumb question, but this MovieAssetParticleMaterial is the only flat/billboard type material that exists currently in Papervision, correct? Basically I’m looking for something like Blitz’s Display Object 2d, that always looks at the camera, but is implemented in Great White (theirs only works on version 1.7 I believe). Or am I going about this the wrong way?

By: seb

seb — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:30:07 +0000

Hi Luke,

at the moment particles only work with Bitmaps. So when you’re sending the particle your MovieClip, it just gets converted to a Bitmap at that point.

For now, the workaround is to :

1) set the createUnique flag in the bitmap
2) create your MovieClip with the text field
3) populate the text in your MovieClip
4) manually draw the MovieClip back into your particle using code a bit like this :

var spriteRect:Rectangle = movie.getBounds(movie);
var m : Matrix = new Matrix();
m.tx = spriteRect.left;
m.ty = spriteRect.top;
particlemat.bitmap.draw(movieClip, m);

Sorry this is a little fiddly – I’ll be doing some more work on particles shortly to make this easier.

cheers!

Seb

By: Luke

Luke — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:14:28 +0000

hey seb, how would i pass information to each of the sphere objects when i create them. for example, in my sphere i’ve got a text field i want to populate based on an array. how can i access the movieclip texture for each object?

By: seb

seb — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 22:45:22 +0000

@cyberfish – any 2d particle system will allow you to do that – then use the movieclip containing the particles as a movieclip material with animation set to true. Try the simple particle system from my sessions.

@Chris Anderson – hey chris, this isn’t actually that straightforward, you could maybe see if you could find a formula for making a geodesic sphere, otherwise you could try to make the particles repel each other, then they’ll space themselves out automatically. It’s not that easy though! good luck

By: Chris Anderson

Chris Anderson — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:42:40 +0000

late to the game and bringing in a dumb question. is there a simple way to space out N number particles equally along the sphere? thanks for any help.

By: cyberfish

cyberfish — Fri, 30 May 2008 16:15:17 +0000

I am curious about this because I’ve spent the past couple of days trying to load a 2d particle effect into a movieclip material and map it to a plane. Do any of the particle materials allow for me to do this? Or are the particles generated by PV3D? Or are my eyes decieving me?

By: seb

seb — Thu, 22 May 2008 10:11:34 +0000

Hi Joe,

that’s what this example is using, so I’m pretty sure that this should work. Are you still having this problem?

Seb

By: joe beuckman

joe beuckman — Tue, 13 May 2008 04:06:44 +0000

Is there a known issue with adding event listeners to (particles)’s with particle’s who use ParticleMaterial? I don’t seem to receive my InteractiveScene3DEvent’s.

Thankyou!