spreading fire

Hi guys.

I’m trying to make a flaming blade for a sword, and animate it.

I managed to do this easily thanks to awesome tutorials on the net.

However, I am now tring to make the fire spread over the blade (frame 1, the blade emits no fire, frame 50 the blade emits fire from handle to half-length, frame 100 the blade is completely on fire, then burns till frame 250).

I tried to use a build effect on the emmiter, but it didn’t work.

I’ve heard that it was feasible with an “Unborn” blend texture, but I conuldn’t find anything useful on google.

I’d like that someone explains me how to do that or point me to a good tutorial, it’d be awesome.

OK - This answer may need some expanding, but for the moment, I’ll put it in simple terms (Not necessarily easy, just simple!)

Make a blend texture on the blade going from black to white .

Do not turn on any effectors for the texture (ie: Colour, Normal, etc.). Just note the texture number

Use that texture number in the particle motion buttons as the texture that defines motion.

As the texture blends up the blade, it will pass from black to white and the particle emmitter will go from 0 to 1 x whatever particle speed you’ve set.

Not unlike this from this page

Cheers.