Particle question.

So I was wondering.. Using a prebuilt particle script, I have to separate questions.
1. I want to simply have particles come out of the whole prim, rather than just the center. The reason is to have the blade of a sword I created "glow", without having 40 invisible prims covering the blade to make the particles >.>.
2. I've also been wondering how possible it is to make a flat circle of particles, such as mist, or "frost nova" (if you've ever played WoW).

Are either of these possible? And if so, any chance you can teach me? =p

A1. You cuold have a "bright" texture for the sword that flickers - i.e. goes through a transition between two or more textures (like the neon signs you sometimes see in SL).

A2. There is a freebie particle generator script knocking about somewhere, or you could buy a particle generator machine, and the 2D circle effect is certainly possible with both.

Using the latest FirstLook viewer (WindLight) you will notice that prims have a new property called GLOW.

At the moment you cannot set it via script yet which means you need to manually edit the prim to activate it. (It is adjustable between 0.0 (no glow) to 1.0 (full glow).

This will give you the wanted glow effect.

1. The GLOW property, as suggested by Squirrel, is the better solution for what you are asking. Although particles could be used to create a 'glow' effect around your sword , I suspect it would only look effective when the sword was static. As soon as you start swashbuckling the sword movement would disperse the particles unpredictably, and not only be unconvincing but likely distracting. However, by playing around with and trading one particle system parameters against another you might just find an acceptable compromise. However, this wouldn't change the fact the GLOW would likely be much easier, more appropriate and more effective

2. See this thread for fog/cloud hints and tips: /54/dd/221793/1.html

Good luck

1) I think you could also make a rather large (blade) particle that A) spawns at the blade center, and B) follows it's movement, in case you didn't want to wait on havoc 4... might need to test for rotation issues.

I dunno about 40 prims, but you could probably do the blade with 4 believably, 6 super nice, using a combination of Rudolph's suggestion and flattened cylinder and cone combo's... I did 3 layers for a pretty glowing apple (using an inverted sculpt map and 3 slightly larger prims)

Particles have the drawback of always facing towards your camera.

Thus, a "sword" particle may assume odd angles when the object isn't held at specific angles or viewed from different angles.

Therefore that approach is not desirable.