Struggling to achieve a particular particle effect.

Questions & Answers
1

Hello all.

I was wondering if anyone could suggest ways of creating a specific particle effect. Looking at this IBM commercial: - YouTube I want to re-create the wispy, multi-coloured wave effect similar to the one being produced by the windmills around 0:13. I’m a 3D generalist and have no experience with code.

All suggestions welcome

Cheers

2

From what I've messed with, with particle effects, I'm guessing no one could really say specifically how anyone would achieve any certain affect. It's mostly just tweaking and messing with all the particle-system values in the inspector panel and getting the right material(s) all put together to make it look and act the way you want it.

To create the spiraling illusion though, I’d say you need a base to start with that all of your particle emitter objects would be childed to. Then you’d rotate that base only, like the windmill has it’s blades hooked to a single base, with something like this → 

var myTrans : Transform ;
var xSpeed : float ;
var ySpeed : float ;
var zSpeed : float ;
 
function Start(){
   myTrans = transform ;
}
 
function Update(){
   RotateWindmill();
}
 
function RotateWindmill(){
myTrans.Rotate(xSpeed * Time.deltaTime, ySpeed * Time.deltaTime, zSpeed * Time.deltaTime);
}

.... Then in the inspector, just play with the x/y/zSpeed values to get it rotating at the speed and on the axis that you want.

Like I said, from the particle stuff I’ve done it seem’s to me that the only way to get them the way you want them is to just keep messing with them until they’re what you want.

Added Note : I saw someone mention that the Unity3.5 beta has some new particle system stuff, but I don’t know what any of that’s about, I’m still using the previous version. Maybe something in that would help too.