Instead of Frame Start and End, please make Particle Systems have Frame Start and Emission Length
I'm working on a 30 second animation and have about 15 instances of short-burst particle systems (sparks, smoke, dust, etc) and it is an absolute waste of time having to always adjust the frame end for each instance.
Why not instead have Emission Length like most other particle systems do, so you only have to adjust one parameter?
It would save so much time.
I understand that the current design is also useful in other cases, so maybe an addition rather than a replacement would be a good call.
A keyframable on/off switch would also be really lovely.
Thank you.
3 Comments
I'm not sure to understand. How does this make less parameters to change? You just replaced frame end by a duration.
This works in projects where you have lots of instances of the same short-burst effect. Say, a car chase where cars keep bumping each other. Every time they bump i want the same 3 frame burst of sparks and metal debree. My way i'd just have a master particle emitter and then i would duplicate it and set the frame start of the new copy at whatever frame i need without having to then also adjust the frame end cause it's taken care of by the Emission Length parameter. It's easier to iterate that way as well.
This would be less of an issue if the Frame Start and End were drivable. Cause then i would just add a driver to the End with "Frame Start + x", with x being whatever number of frames i need the emission duration to be.
Ok, I see your point.
Though I suspect that once the particles' system is ported into nodes, all these kinds of event and condition based controls will be possible then.