Attaching Emitter To Mover - Sorta

[legacy-Muad'dib_UT]

Ok I can manage to attach a normal emitter to a standard keyframed mover that only moves by changing it's location, but I'm having major trouble with attaching an emitter to a mover that moves by changing it's rotation around it's pivot point. Here's the scenario:

I've got a LoopMover - rotating around it's pivot point (the pivot point of which I changed using the PrePivot values) with two keyframes - 1 at the start of rotation, 1 at the end of it. I've set up my emitter as normal, placed it in relation to the mover where I want it to be and used the AttachTags correctly as far as I'm aware. Depending on my test runs, here's the results I get:

1) The emitter shows up, but doesn't move with the mover at all. Just stays put.

2) The emitter moves, but not in relation to the mover itself. Ie, if I place the emitter at the corner of the mover and the mover rotates, the emitter tends to simply zigzag back and forth along one axis while slowly creeping side to side along another axis.

3) The emitter (as in the case of using an xEmitter instead of normal Emitter class) simply doesn't show up.

In none of these cases does the emitter actually stay in the spot of the mover that I placed it when the mover actually moves. So I guess my question is - am I doing this completely and utterly wrong or am I running into engine quirks at this point? In either case, how might I go about solving it?

[legacy-[SSB]Naturlich]

are your 2 keyponts in the same position even though they are the start and finish of the loop? Thats my guess, your emitter IS moving, it moves from key0 (Base) to key1 and back again, but since they are in the same position it's got nowhere to go.

I think you're only going to get the effect you want my using a true mover rather than using rotation, ie setting up a number of keyframes for it to cause the rotation, then your emitter should rotate with it.

Any other ideas guys?

[legacy-Chris IX]

For my fan, I used the rotaion change settings in movememnt rather than keyframes, and set physics to phys-rotation. Give that a go.

[legacy-[SSB]Naturlich]

the problem though is the emitter not the fan (if I read right) and what i think it happening is the emitter needs the mover to have keyframes for it to also move to.

Still, another thought, did you remember to make the emitter bDirectional=true ???? if not it will always face the same direction so you wont have it rotating with the fan, using directional might rotate it if you havent set that.

[legacy-Muad'dib_UT]

Thanks for the responses guys. To answer a few questions here:

The keyframes are setup with the first at point zero - the second, and last, at roughly 350 degrees around the pivot point which is placed well outside the mover. So it rotates almost in a full circle, but not quite.

No the problem isn't with the mover - it moves exactly as I would expect it to. Just that the emitter isn't moving along with the mover itself. It either stays put or does that weird creeping dance that I described.

I've not tried setting the bDirectional to true on the regular emitter - will try that and see if it gets results. xEmitters are bDirectional=true by default if I remember correctly although I'd prefer to use a regular emitter in this case if possible.

Again - thanks for the replies folks :)

[legacy-Chris IX]

what I meant was I thought that the emitter might not move properly becuase it's followingthe keyframes. If that's true, what I said could do it.

[legacy-Muad'dib_UT]

Well making the regular emitter bDirectional=true changes it's behavior, however it's still not attaching to the mover the way one would expect. It still does the zig zag dance only now you can basically point the direction of the zig zag according to the actors rotation :D hehe

Too weird. May end up keyframing the entire thing or coding my own class to handle it.

[legacy-TDW-Socke]

any soöutions for this problem? i've got a rotating mover, which simply rotates all the time, and i wanted to attach an emmitter to it. the dynamical view in ued shows it up right, but ingame there's nothing. I guess it's also not moving. :(

oh, and it's a beam-emitter (better say 2, a start and an end).

[-=¤willhaven¤=-]

if the emitter is attached to a mover and you have the emitter effect with an offset... it will do STRANGE THINGS

[legacy-Mr Evil]

Try setting 'bHardAttach' for the emitter to true.

[legacy-TDW-Socke]

ok, bHardAttach helped a lot ;), but now, as it's a beam, the emitted beams stay on their emitted position, and dont move with the emitter:

http://www.1337noob.de/pics/shot674.jpg

i tried to set the coordinates to relative, and now the emitted beams stay on their position, but they do not emitt to the tag-actor anymore :(

http://www.1337noob.de/pics/shot677.jpg

any ideas??? :rolleyes:

[legacy-TDW-Socke]

hmm, ok, got it working with traceoffset.

[legacy-TDW-Socke]

ups double posting :rolleyes: