Texture Sheet Animation
In this tutorial I am going to try and elaborate on one of the most useful nodes in Shuriken. The Texture Sheet animation allows you to get some great looking particle systems without being too expensive. Using an image sequence packed into a sprite sheet you can get an entire animation to appear on one particle sprite.
Its possible to simulate a special effect in an external program, batch render it to an image sequence and then pack it into a single sheet like the one above (I may do a tutorial on this in the future).
Its possible to simulate a special effect in an external program, batch render it to an image sequence and then pack it into a single sheet like the one above (I may do a tutorial on this in the future).
The example I will be using in this tutorial is a particle explosion suited for games with low graphical demands. Now start as usual with a new particle system and rename it.
Go to the emission tab and set the rate to 0 while setting the burst rate to 1. We are going to have the explosion animation playing on the sprite so not many will be needed. Now go up to the main tab and slow the speed down to 0.1, lifetime to 0.5 and for randomization set the start rotation to random between 2 constants and then set the range to -360 and 360. Now to make sure the particle spawns in the same place every time go to the shape tab and set it to box. Change all dimensions to 0, this will make sure the particles all spawn at the same point. |
Now lets set up the material. Crate a new material and set the shader to particles>Additive(soft). Apply a texture sheet to the material. You can find some examples just by googling or if you have the means, make your own. I will also make the example in this tutorial available for download.
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Playing the system now should animate the explosion, for this example the job is pretty much done. however it is also possible to pack numerous different effects into the one sheet so long as they all occupy their own row.
By changing it from whole sheet to signle row you can have numerous unique effects on the one sheet chosen at random, or if you want different particle behaviours for the different effects you can specify which row you want played every time.
By changing it from whole sheet to signle row you can have numerous unique effects on the one sheet chosen at random, or if you want different particle behaviours for the different effects you can specify which row you want played every time.