local and global time for particles

[rubble]

Terribly sorry if this has been answered elsewhere, but I can’t find a solution. I have a particle emitter which lets say emits several particles a frame over 1000 frames. The objects it emits have their own internal ipo to fade them from 1 alpha to 0 alpha over 10 frames. However they seem to use the global time, so all fade out within the first 10 frames of the full animation and from frame 11 emit in their final state. Is it possible to force each new particle to begin its colour/scale/etc animations when born, not based on global time?

Cheers for any assistance and as a first time chap here, apologies in advance if this is the wrong forum. Never met a forum yet I couldn’t post in the wrong place and get shouted at.

Cheers,

Rubble

P.S. Blender is one of the most astonishing software projects I have ever encountered - right up there with XNA, C#, C, RiscOS, Linux and Elite - well done to all involved.

[shteeve]

hey rubble,

sounds to me like you do this whole wrong forum posting thing on purpose

if you scroll down the forum indexes you’ll see there are a bunch of support subforums.

as for your actual question, i’m assuming you are using object visualization for your particles. i ran up against this barrier myself with them. while their spacial transformation ipos are evaluated in “particle time” their material properties are unfortunately stuck playing in global time.

if you are looking to have particles that fade over time, you either have to use halo particles (and basically be restricted to glowing dots), or use billboard images representing your particle object. the way to get billboards to change alpha over time is a little more involved though. see here for a tutorial:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/Billboard_Animation

essentially it involves creating a blend texture that describes a particle’s opacity over its lifespan.

good luck!