I'm having, and have been having, a terrible time trying to attach (InputSetParentAttachment through Hammer usually) the SmokeStack particle effect to a custom model.
Here's what I'm looking to achieve: We have smoking characters who MUST have smoke coming from their cigarette or mouth when they exhale. This is a requirement basically for grant money for the most part, so there are no sidesteps to this visualization. We've opted to have the exhale from the mouth only for now. Baby steps. Also, we're going to need fire on a lighter, which is having the same problem... but, baby steps. All my below examples are referring to using the SmokeStack entity on a custom model for the most part. The problem: When you attach a particle effect to an attachment point on the model (after parenting of course), it WILL NOT UPDATE it's position after the initial move. Yes, particles are emmitting. Yes, they went to the attachment location. However, when the model animates or moves, the particle effect continues to emit only at the location the attachment point was when first attached. The emmitter doesn't follow or update it's position as the attachment point moves around. Particles just simply continue to emit from the same spot even though it should move. Quirks: 1) This problem does NOT occur in debug mode, only release mode. In debug mode, everything is fine. This makes it incredibly difficult to accurately trace. Also, I can't find any #ifdef __DEBUG or anything of the sort that would make the slightest difference. 2) This problem has happened on HL2 models such as Breen or Alyx. When these characters are moved around in Hammer for their spawn location, sometimes the problem goes away unexplicably. I have not yet had the problem go away on custom models. 3) Turning on wireframe mode and walking around bends and corners can bring you to a different visleaf where the particles stop rendering. When you return to the visleaf which renders the particles, the position of the emmitter DOES update to the location of the attachment at that time. It does not continue to update in any fashion however afterwards, but just stays at the location it was in when you returned to that visleaf. Plea: Please somebody give me a hand with this. I've tried as much as I can think of, but the attachment follow code just simply goes back to BaseEntity, which is where it works for everything else that isn't a particle. I've already looked at the grenades that emit smoke and have the smoke follow the grenades around, but the code seems completely identical to the smokestack, or at least I'm not seeing something of key importance. Suggestions are welcome. I'll respond with how following that suggestion has worked (even if I've already done it) to keep people well informed. _________________________________________________________________ FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar get it now! http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ To unsubscribe, edit your list preferences, or view the list archives, please visit: http://list.valvesoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/hlcoders
