Digital Art Zone

When you select POINT at CAMERA in the particle emitters SHAPE? What camera do the particles point at? I have 4 in my scene?

I would assume the render camera.

Yeah, that’s a tough one…I agree, probably the render camera. Though who knows? Could be another one. And how are we supposed to know? It’s not like you can figure it out or anything. What are we supposed to do, try and figure what camera they’re pointing to just by looking or whatever? There should be something in the manual that explains it, but there probably isn’t. They should really fix that.

Looking at the smoke particle preset it actually says Facing camera and not Point At camera. I know it sounds like splitting hairs, but perhaps there’s a difference in implementation not readily apparent to us lay people.

I do notice that the squares generated by the particle generator do not appear to face the camera, so I wonder if it’s a render-time calculation?

Yeah, I don’t think we’ll ever figure this one out. I mean, how do you figure out which way smoke is facing? You can’t. Smoke doesn’t face anything, it’s just there.

That must be a bug. Someone should file a bug report.

HA !!! Smoke that faces something, what a joke. And particles that face something, what a joke. Why would anyone want that? Another bug, obviously. Someone should file a bug report.

Yea i would hope it would be the render camera

Yes I think it is a render time calculation, so whichever camera you use to render, the planes will face that when you render.

Hey, Richard, I just had a crazy thought….

Not sure if it makes sense and stuff, but I’m thinking there might actually be a way to figure this all out. I know, it’s, like, really really complicated, and there’s probably nothing in that stupid manual and stuff to tell us the answer. But maybe you can, like, figure it out somehow.

I dunno, just a crazy thought, but maybe you can try something like this…

Open a scene, add a PE and a couple of cameras, set the plane particles (the particles start out as planes I think) to “Facing Camera”, and then render from Camera 1 then Camera 2.

Hmm…not sure, but I *think* that if both renders have the planes facing the camera, then maybe (not sure though) that means that “Facing Camera” means that it’s facing the RENDER camera.

Because, like, if it didn’t mean “facing the render camera”, then the planes wouldn’t be facing the render camera.

Just a thought. Though I think this is really complicated, so maybe that’s just too simple a solution to be true. They really need to make a better manual.

less trolling and more renders of models of the calibre of Richard’s might also be a good idea
just saying!

Well wendy that would require EFFORT on my part. Why should I do that when i can get people on here to do it!  Just saying

RichardChaos - 05 August 2012 01:04 AM

Well wendy that would require EFFORT on my part. Why should I do that when i can get people on here to do it!  Just saying

Hold on there cowboy, as usual I’m the punching bag, not you…

She’d never criticize you, just me. This time it’s for daring to chide you for something that you clearly just admitted you are doing, which is relying on everyone else to do your work for you rather than spending a few minutes trying to come up with a solution yourself.

So I not only gave you a solution for your problem, but also encouraged you to figure it out yourself next time (maybe not as sweetly as some would wish), because as we all know (I hope) you get a lot more satisfaction in accomplishing something on your own.

But that’s not what’s important here. Apparently, for some reason, what’s important to some people is not helping to find solutions, it’s spending a lot of time posting images (hence the reference to posting images). I have no clue why that’s so important to some, but I guess it is. Or maybe it’s just a convenient excuse to attack with.

Anyway, I do encourage you to find solutions on your own before posting. It not only is more satisfying, it’s much easier to remember stuff when you’ve broken a little sweat to figure it out.

maybe Rich has Joe on his ignore list so is missing half the conversation!