Sprite creation?

Is there a way to texture a prim and treat it like a sprite so that it's always turning on a certain axis facing the player?

What I am trying to do is place some statues on the roof of a building. Building them out of prims would be a timewasting and tedious waste of time and poly counts and I already have an alpha channel image of the statue I want to use. I want to make it look like it's rotating around on it's z axis so it doesn't look like a flat sheet when you walk around it.

Thank You!

I've been meaning to put in a feature request for something like that for ages but never get 'round to it.

(i.e. slowly moving particles with the face direction of motion flag set are the closest you'll get at the moment.)

Just do what they do for prim trees. Use three prims, each alpha textured so it's transparent except for the view of the statue, each identical, and each rotated 60 degrees apart non a common Z-axis. Whichever plane is most facing the viewer will seem to be in front.

If you put the 'front' of the statue on one side of each plane, and the 'back' of the statue on the back, you'll generally get two views of it, each covering a 180 degree arc.

particles always face the camera, 1 really long drop particle (that doesnt drop)might be an option

I too have an interest in sprite creation. Have had some success with the drop particle. It will always turn to face your camera (as it has no z dimension at all), but that works fine for a lot of things.

edit: I suppose this probably will end up into scripting... anyway, I have devised a couple of scripts using Jopsy's Particle Script (go to the Particle Lab and get yourself one, and take a tour there, you wont regret it). I called it a projector, as that's actually what it is.

Anyway, you can do this, no waiting for a feature it is already in there. I will get around to posting my mod of the script at some point soon.