Scaling the effect of a particle effect

Questions & Answers
1

I have 2 particle effects for weather in my game, snow and rain. They both look very nice.
The snow should kick in when the player reaches a certain height on the terrain, therefore it rains in the valleys, and snows on the mountain.
I set it up that one rain is disabled when the players transform reaches a certain height, and the snow is ENabled.

However the effect is too harsh a switch and I realise I need some kind of crossfade from one to the other. I was hoping that at the switch point, some remaining particles would “rain down” before it becomes the other, but it doesn’t of course, it just turns them straight off.

My question is in 2 parts:

  1. Which parameter on a particle system can be used to adjust an effects from Max to Min?
    and
  2. How, can I scale this parameter based on height.

I should mention that Im not a programmer, but using PlayMaker quite extensively, so I just needs a “theoretical” concept of how to do it, so I may see if I can achieve this in PM.

Mark

2

The simplest way of doing this is to change the emission rate for a curve and set looping. When you ease out of rain you should set the emission rate with a falling curve and set loop off and start snow with an increasing curve loop off. When the animation exits on the snow then change the emission to a value and enable loop on it. And this process can be reversed to achieve when you are lower that threshold.

3

Just to clarify

When the animation exits

You mean the animation caused by the curve?
So that, when my player hits the height needed, looping is turned of and the emission rate is faded out by a curve, the reverse for the faded in system?

Is that it…

I think I get what you mean… and it seems plausible Thanks!