particles and animation offset. -how?

Support Basics & Interface
#1

Here’s a tricky question for you all…Wondering if anybody has a brilliant solution :wink:

I have a model of a firefly parented to a particle emmiter so as to create a nice little cloud of fireflies. So far so good. Now, I have animated a halo texture on the original firefly model to simulate the little blinking lights. The problem is that ALL the instances of the firefly particles blink at the exact same time. I thought that possible if each particle firefly was born at a different time then maybe the material animation on each would be offset as well but no such luck. Any clue on how to make the animations start offset from each other? Major thanks to anybody you can solve this…

-Trev

#2

um i could be wrong her, but you have one material on all the fireflies - so one IPO curve for that material - so all the fiere flies are blinking in unison because they all refrencing back to one material IPO insted of many material IPO’s.

On sollution, the hard way I know is to have more than on firefly and add them to separate emmiters. I say separate immeters or a pattern will develope in the flight paths as well. but of cause it wouldn’t take long for some one to notice the blink pattern.

:expressionless: best i can do though

#3

That’s the only solution I’ve been able to come up with myself. Thanks for the sugestion. Hmm, maybe I’ll put in a feature request.
Thanks,

Trev