Ground-level awareness for particle generator?

PRODUCT: Cute hen that saves prims by generating her chicks as particles randomly near her

PROBLEM: on anything but flat ground, the chicks rez embedded in the gound and die a HORRIBLE death, peeping in anguish.

QUESTION: Is there a command that can make the particle generator rez the chicks right AT ground level?

If so, how computationally expensive is the command? I hate seeing the chicks stuck up to their tailfeathers in the dirt, but I don't want to make something that causes more lag than a casino full of prim hair and scripted bling.

Cute idea.

Well, you can put the emitter in a child prim of the hen which is at the height you want (even using an invisible prim placed perfectly, if none of the existing prims is at the right height).

Just note that particles are completely unaware of terrain, other objects, sim borders, etc, so that if the chicks move at all, they will most likely go through the ground or other objects, or even fly through the air.

Also note that particles always face the viewer, so when viewed from weird angles (like from above), they won't look "natural".

I'm trying to keep prim counts to an absolute minimum. The hen's texture is placed so her feet are about half-way up a transparent prim. Embed her in the ground so she is "standing", and the chicks appear at the level her feet. On a flat surface, it's a great effect.

I'm hoping that there is a command that can emit the particles at various locations BUT calculate Z for those locations to compensate for sloping ground.



Yes ... they even pop up inside houses and other objects.



SL is so not natural! But as low-prim decor, she's working acceptably now.

How about simply using a Temp-On-Rez object for the chicks?

Sadly, there's no way to control just one aspect of the emitter once it start emitting particles. The only way to do it is to re-call llParticleSystem with a different parameters, like burst radius (assuming the use of the angle, or angle_cone patterns with an angle_begin and angle_end of 0 or PI) as you move around. The particle system itself is blissfully unaware of anything else in the world, so you have to help it.

Alternatively, as Milambus said, you could make the chicks temp-on-rez, which makes them not count against parcel/sim prim limits.

Thanks.

I'll play with the particle generator a bit to see if I can adapt it for the slope of a lot.

Temp on Rez may be the best way, because then I can check the ground level and rez just above it.