Particles that look like a plank?

Is it possible to configure the particle system such that particles are emitted from one prim to another, randomly located, target prim, to look like a solid plank, or at the very least a solid rectangle of any particular color, connecting the two prims together? Any ideas, suggestions, or coding snip-its would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you,
Ford

Hi, Ford. You can certainly do this, but the most straightforward way of doing it --- use a particle that looks like a plank, rez one a time, etc. -- will only look right from a few angles of view. That's because particles are 2D and always appear to everyone's camera as a front-on view of the texture in question. So, if you have made a particle stream of textures that look like a rectangular plank, it will look great from above, but viewed from the side, the plank will appear to be at 90 degrees from the 3D part of the build.

You might be able to get around this with very clever use of special textures and multiple particle streams, but PIA for little payoff.
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using the follow vector attribute you MAY be able to do horrizontal bar particle with high emmision frequency that that that builds length to look like a plank kinda like

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with overlaps... not 100% sore about viewer angles, but a pop over to the particle laboratory should tell you if it'll work for alternate angles.