Warcraft III Particle System
Under the Create Toolbar – Particle Systems, you will find the BlizPart particle object. This plug-in is a complete particle system and material editor in one.
The particle type is always four vertex quads. There are three key frames you can set to determine the life of a particle: the initial Start, the Middle with user-placeable timing, and the End just as the particle life has ended. Animating the textures can then be done in the two segments: one from Start to Middle called lifespan, and the other from Middle to End called decay.
The Warcraft III particle system uses a relative orientation. Thus, it behaves oddly if you don’t do the following: always make these objects in the top viewport and animate them into position, leaving them with 0,0,0 rotation at frame 0.
A gravity space warp is used to add gravity per emitter.
BlizParticle options
Count – Has no effect.
Speed – Initial velocity of created particles. Can be animated.
Variation % – Random variation % of speed.
Cone Angle – Angle of random spray pattern from center. A value of 180 will cause particles to emit in a 360-degree ball.
Timing options
Life – Number of seconds each particle continues to be drawn after its creation.
Parts/Sec – Number of particles created per second. Can be animated.
Squirt – When the Squirt option is checked and an animated stepped Bezier controller is used on parts/sec, a large number of particles will emit simultaneously on the parts/sec keys in the amount of the key value. This is good for explosion effects.
Width and Length – Width and length of the emitter plane where particles are created randomly from its surface area.
Line Emitter – Cause the cone spray pattern to lock to one axis.
Texure options t
Blend, Add, Modulate, Mod, Mod 2X, and Alpha Key - Identical to the options in the Warcraft III material. Alpha Key is also known as 2 Bit Alpha.
Texture Filename – The .TGA texture being used for the particles.
Rows and Cols – If the particle is using sections of the texture at a time, you can use these options to set the number of rows and columns in a texture. Animating texture particles can be made to have frames all on one texture map that start at the top left and go to the right.
Unshaded – The particles do not use lighting and are always full bright.
Unfogged – Particles ignore distance fog.
Replaceable texture – Can be set to team glow to create procedurally colored glowing particles for a unit.
Particle options
Head – The particle is a billboarded square quad.
Tail – A tail particle is billboarded along the axis of motion and stretches in length based on speed.
Both – Draws both heads and tails.
Tail Length – A multiplier to the calculated tail particle length.
Time (parametric) Middle – The relative time of the middle key to the life.
Color, Start/Middle/End – Three values of RGB Multiply for the particle.
Alpha, Start/Middle/End – Three alpha values for the particle. Zero is transparent.
Scale, Start/Middle/End – Scale of the particle in units across. Lifespan Head UV Anim – Starting and ending cell number for animating texture sequence of the first half of the Head particle’s life. Repeat will cause this animating texture to cycle.
Decay Head UV Anim - Starting and ending cell number for animating texture sequence of the second half of the Head particle’s life. Repeat will cause this animating texture to cycle.
Lifespan Tail UV Anim - Starting and ending cell number for animating texture sequence of the first half of the Tail particle’s life. Repeat will cause this animating texture to cycle.
Decay Tail UV Anim - Starting and ending cell number for animating texture sequence of the second half of the Tail particle’s life. Repeat will cause this animating texture to cycle.
Other options
Priority Plane – When you are using blend mode, the Priority Plane option can cause particles to draw in a specific order with other blend objects in the same model. The lower the number, the earlier the particles will draw.
Particles in Model Space – Causes animation of the particle emitter to be carried over to the particles.
XY Quads – Causes the particles to be a type of tail that orients to the XY grid.
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