I just spent an hour or two scanning the documentation and web, looking for a way to control particle billboards orientation.
But I haven’t found anything. There is only one thing similar in legacy particle system: Particle.rotation but it’s a float, so I guess it drives one axis only, the “normal” axis.
What I need to do is to orient particles towards my camera only at certain times. I thought it would be easy-peasy through the script but to my amazement, billboarding is not exposed.
That said, Shuriken is particularly closed to scripting. Why is that? Some legal issues? Do Unity developers plan on opening it in the future or is it sealed for forever, as it is now? (I’ve also searched and searched for any info on this “closeness” of shuriken but have found only silence )
In connection to what I just wrote about particle orientation, how are people orienting particles when they use mesh-particles? It’s hard to believe that such an option doesn’t exist.
It now occurred to me that I could solve my problem if it would be possible for particles to orient towards an object and not the active camera. Then I would manipulate that object. Is that possible?
Yep there’s no option sadly. Shuriken’s Particle interface is quite limited right now. I suspect, judging by the way they’ve constructed the UI for it, that they intend to extend and open it up somewhere down the line. I’m seriously considering writing my own, but I can’t see my getting something nearly as efficient (it is very good performance-wise).
Unity follows the ‘most common usage’ approach here I guess and additionally tries to comply to what billboards are in 3d rendering, which are surfaces that are orthogonal to the camera view direction.
What you would like to get or use is not billboard anymore, it would be some form of look at / follow orientation.
As for the exposing: Part of the reason is surely that its just new (see the differences from Unity 3.5 where it was first added to Unity 4.0 to see that in action :))
But another part is likely also bound to the simple reason that shuriken runs on the GPU while your scripts are on the cpu and the resulting performance hit from passing that around.
For your purpose the legacy system would make more sense potentially as it ran on the CPU hence had the data where you needed them for modification in script.
I’ve just had an idea on how to solve ugly flickering in stationary particle clouds (which is a result of billboarding), but I’d need control over facing. I’m also thinking about trying to write my own system but it should involve manipulating vertices and I’ve never done that before
I guess it’s good-bye to these nice clouds I’ve been making yesterday then
Thanks for info Dreamora. I wasn’t aware of that GPU/CPU problem. But even legacy system doesn’t allow control over billboarding. Yes I understand that it’s not quite billboarding anymore, but it kinda is…only, the difference is that it doesn’t get billboarded towards the player camera but to some other object.
Really a shame It was great flying around and through these clouds. If only that ugly billboard popup wasn’t popping up And I need access to only one variable to solve it, da*n.
Anyone who’d like this option, I’ve made a feedback-idea so you can vote:
)
