Ok, I thought I’d write this, because I’ve had a lot of experience with particles. (I think it’s themain reason I got blender) Anyway, here goes:
Make sure the particles fade away (either using alpha IPOs or color IPOs)
Make sure the particles don’t spread too far apart, creating the dreaded, fake-looking “particle effect”
Flames start out white in the center and fade to orange.
Use a cloud texture for flames or explosions with colorband option on.
multiple emitters, OSA, cloud or image textures, proper lighting, and good parameters for a particle effect all help make a good-looking particle effect.
feel free to post any other ideas you might have for particle improvement.
And remember: experience is the best teacher.
umm, I need to test this one, but I think that dupli-particle planes (well…) could create reasonable atmospheric effects if you use a spot lamp with a large bias value, and texture and bump map them well (no halo materials)
Particles have only just clicked with me, so here’s my advice…
1: when experimenting with making particles systems, make small adjustments to just one thing at a time.
2: when going for fine particles, like smoke, use a halo material, and turn down the halo size, and set to ztrasp, and turn down the alpha.
3: start usind a mesh with not too many vertices, which will make it easier to see what’s going on.
4: if you have multiple emmitors doing the same thing, like say, torches, and you need them to be slightly off in their emmissions, set an offset in the animation buttons for each emmitor.
5: Don’t forget to hit ‘recalc all’ every once in awhile after making adjustments.
6: Try using keyframes in materials to animate the colors and materials values of your emmisions
7: To randomize emissions, hit ‘hash’ with all vertices selected in edit buttons.
Anyway, here goes: