Make a particle effect travel the way i want (Queen of Pain base attack)

[Knarf]

I have this Queen of Pain base attack (Dota 2), which I want a Queen of Pain to use. I've tried everything I know, but for some reason i can't get it to simply start at her hand and travel in a straight line towards a certain spot. Thanks for the help in advance!

[Knarf]

Bump, help please! :)

[R234]

I'm sure I could figure it out, that is, if I had DOTA2...

Anywhere I could get my hands on the particular PCF file that contains this "Queen of Pain base attack"? 'Cause I'm not buying (and especially not pirating) a 30 bucks game I don't want just for that...

[Knarf]

I uploaded the file for you! http://www.2shared.com/file/EL9wG-MN/hero_queenofpain.html

The main particle: queen_base_attack1

There are a lot of other particles for the base attack as well:
queen_base_attack_trail_c1
queen_base_attack_trail_1
queen_base_attack_explosion1
queen_base_attack_explosion_flash1
queen_base_attack_explosion_points1
queen_base_attack_launch1
queen_base_attack_explosion_points_b1

Right now I'm focussing on the main particle, but the idea is that all the effects etc of the attack are there after all. So maybe I have to do something for that first?

I can give you a Dota 2 invite if you want by the way, then it's free :)

[R234]

Thanks, but no thanks. I'm not into MOBAs.

Looking into it now...

EDIT:

Wow, I can see why you're struggling with it, it's really weird...

There's 7 control points, but it looks like only three of them actually do anything. ControlPoint0 seems to be the beginning of the effect (so I'm guessing the caster's hand or whatever she throws these with), while CP4 is the end of it, so the target.

Now this one's weird; The speed of the projectile appears to be based on CP2's position, more specifically its "X" coordinate relative to the transform joint. Positive values make it go faster, negative values make it go backwards, I guess we don't want that.

So, from what I can gather, you just need to lock and zero the transform joint to the caster, controlPoint4 to the target, then move controlPoint2 with the translation manipulator's red arrow, in the direction of said arrow, to adjust projectile speed. I guess you'll have to set the particle system's duration to fit with when the projectile hits its target.

Does it look as it should this way?

[Knarf]

I got some questions on that :)

"you just need to lock and zero the transform joint to the caster, controlPoint4 to the target, "

Lock + Zero the transform to the caster? You mean the model that's attacking? Link it to the whole model or just the hand?

CP4 to the target? The particle has no real target, it just has to fly in a straight line through the air and then stop eventually.

[R234]

You lock transform to where you want the projectile to start from. If you want it to come out of the character's hand, then you can lock it to the hand. Perhaps there's a special joint the game uses to know where to draw them from, or maybe it uses the hand joint, but if you don't know the hand joint should do the job just fine.

ControlPoint4 goes where you want the projectile's movement to end. If you want it to hit, say, another character square in the face, then you can lock it to the target character's head joint.

[Knarf]

Ah okay nice, thanks for the help!

[Knarf]

By the way, my SFM keeps crashing all the time since about 2 days. It just shuts down without an error or anything. Do you know how I can fix this?

Edit: it's gotten so bad that i can use SFM anymore, crashes every minute :S