Object fade in/out over period of time.

[Elyda]

Not sure I worded the title correctly but I have multiple rendered images of a character I like. ideally I wanna know if it's possible for me to have one displayed and after a certain amount of time have it fade away and another image replace it and so on.

[Biohazard]

The only way to do this right now would be with the pulse image effect and applying it to the alpha channel (there is an option for it).

[vell]

if theyre static images of characters you could also load the cut outs into a particle and use that to fade them in and out but you wouldnt be able to have animations on them.

[Elyda]

引用自 vell：

if theyre static images of characters you could also load the cut outs into a particle and use that to fade them in and out but you wouldnt be able to have animations on them.

How would I go about doing that exactly? That sounds just fine as I didn't plan for any animations on em.

[vell]

If i was doing it I would make a sprite sheet with each character in its own grid. so if you have 10 characters i would make a 1000x1000px blank canvas, load the 10 characters in align them in the bottom center and size them appropratly. then extend that canvas to 8000 accross and 2000 down, 8000x8000 is around the maximum supported size so you cant keep going sideways. then you can use alignment tools or a 1000x1000 square to position each of those characters in their own section of the grid you made and you should have a row of 8 and a row of 2 below it.

once you have that make a particle system, and import that textures you just made as a sprite sheet, with the sizes being 1000 1000 9 1 (the number of frames option has to be -1 of the total number of frames or it breaks) set its maximum count to 1 and its rate to 1, its lifetime to however long you want them to last for and in the emitter you would need to atleast remove the y part of the spawn area to make them always spawn in a line on the bottom. Somewhere in system or general there is an option for "sequence or random frame" change this to random frame and then you can make them fade in and out using "change alpha"

I made a video a little while ago that covers most of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsY5ZqU6wrM the particle stuff starts at around 3 minutes

[Elyda]

引用自 vell：

If i was doing it I would make a sprite sheet with each character in its own grid. so if you have 10 characters i would make a 1000x1000px blank canvas, load the 10 characters in align them in the bottom center and size them appropratly. then extend that canvas to 8000 accross and 2000 down, 8000x8000 is around the maximum supported size so you cant keep going sideways. then you can use alignment tools or a 1000x1000 square to position each of those characters in their own section of the grid you made and you should have a row of 8 and a row of 2 below it.

once you have that make a particle system, and import that textures you just made as a sprite sheet, with the sizes being 1000 1000 9 1 (the number of frames option has to be -1 of the total number of frames or it breaks) set its maximum count to 1 and its rate to 1, its lifetime to however long you want them to last for and in the emitter you would need to atleast remove the y part of the spawn area to make them always spawn in a line on the bottom. Somewhere in system or general there is an option for "sequence or random frame" change this to random frame and then you can make them fade in and out using "change alpha"

I made a video a little while ago that covers most of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsY5ZqU6wrM the particle stuff starts at around 3 minutes

Thanks for the response! I just gave it a try, following the video and everything and I can't seem to replicate that effect at all. My entire sprite sheet will show up (bright of course) and then do an odd....line ish fade, screenshot below to show what I mean.


http://prntscr.com/mi77wv


This is obviously after following just the first particle system, so maybe I'm missing something further on but If I couldn't replicate the first one you did, then I felt continuing was pointless, so if that's where my error is stemming from, feel free to tell me.


Also, just in case it matters, the screenshot I provided was using a 2x2 sprite sheet as the one I tested before it (4x6) also got the same result.

[vell]

the brightness is most likley because your particle blending is still set to addative, check the top option of the general > materials page and set the blending to translucent.

My best guess for why its showing all the frames is either you didnt check spritesheet or you input the total size of the picture not the size of the the frames either of those things would make the whole picture show up.

https://i.imgur.com/bL7BkJV.png

so if your 4x6 grid is 4000x6000px in size when you load in the sprite sheet you would put the size of the individual frames 1000 width 1000 height 23 frames (24 total -1) and duration 1

[Elyda]

引用自 vell：

the brightness is most likley because your particle blending is still set to addative, check the top option of the general > materials page and set the blending to translucent.

My best guess for why its showing all the frames is either you didnt check spritesheet or you input the total size of the picture not the size of the the frames either of those things would make the whole picture show up.

https://i.imgur.com/bL7BkJV.png

so if your 4x6 grid is 4000x6000px in size when you load in the sprite sheet you would put the size of the individual frames 1000 width 1000 height 23 frames (24 total -1) and duration 1

Okay, sorry for the late reply, bunch of irl stuff came up.


So yeah that was what I was missing! Once I did that everything was peachy and working and I was going to respond and tell you so but got busy.


HOWEVER....

I finally got free time today amongst all that crap and went to go work on it further, picking up from your video where you add the mouse interaction, thought hey why not. Go and doing it and whatnot and through some type of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ it began to only show 9 sprites out of the 10 I had. Previously it did show all 10 just fine.

So, due to the particle systems somewhat confusing design (or my pure ignorance) I get frustrated at not understanding it and what I did wrong, and totally just delete the particle system, choosing to remake it via your videos steps.

Which I do just fine...except now it's still not showing that one frame. There's just a blank. After the fifth sprite there's just nothing, then it goes right to the sixth sprite, and so on (using sequence mode to see them in order to make sure they appear correctly)

I am seriously at a loss at this point as I even have the one showing all ten frames still as my current wallpaper as I didn't change it after that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ began. (Links at the bottom shows the working and messed up one respectively

Is there perhaps a way to go back, I frantically tried to load back the wallpaper multiple times but it just brought me to the work I was currently doing, which I feel should be something that's changed entirely because now I've lost that completely working particle system and no way to cross examine.

I apologize if this is written very sporadically, at this point I'm really frustrated cause the free time I finally have seems to be wasted trying to get back to where I already WAS in my progress.



HERE is a GIF of the working one (the one currently on the SAVED desktop wallpaper)

https://gyazo.com/3a5c8a8f9079256ceeb2e381ad2ffb24


HERE is a GIF of the now broken one. Gif starts from sprite 4, skipping the peace sign one that was present in the first gif.

https://gyazo.com/276fe2091e35d816a0f6210c39a46f68

And yes I did reduce the frames by 1 as you said so that can't be the issue.

[YoriS]

I from Russia)

[Biohazard]

If you only removed it from the scene, you can still choose it from the asset list at the bottom or the drop down in the particle editor. If you actually deleted it from within the particle editor then you can't recover it because it's deleted from your disk.

The number of frames should be the actual number of frames that the texture has. Maybe there is currently a bug when a certain combination is used between non power of two textures, random frame animation, no sequence blending and UV clamping. But the number of frames that is set should be the actual number of frames it has - I assume this is somehow related to only 9 out of 10 showing up.

Ideally the texture should be a power of two, UV clamping disabled and if you're using the random animation mode, frame blending should be disabled too. I'm pretty sure with those settings using the correct frame number should work fine, but if any of them is different, they'll have an effect on everything, in which case that might be causing the bug you experienced.

Edit: If you can reproduce the issue feel free to share the files here since it should work one way or another, but with so many variables there's a good chance I missed testing some combination.

[Elyda]

引用自 Biohazard：

If you only removed it from the scene, you can still choose it from the asset list at the bottom or the drop down in the particle editor. If you actually deleted it from within the particle editor then you can't recover it because it's deleted from your disk.

The number of frames should be the actual number of frames that the texture has. Maybe there is currently a bug when a certain combination is used between non power of two textures, random frame animation, no sequence blending and UV clamping. But the number of frames that is set should be the actual number of frames it has - I assume this is somehow related to only 9 out of 10 showing up.

Ideally the texture should be a power of two, UV clamping disabled and if you're using the random animation mode, frame blending should be disabled too. I'm pretty sure with those settings using the correct frame number should work fine, but if any of them is different, they'll have an effect on everything, in which case that might be causing the bug you experienced.

Edit: If you can reproduce the issue feel free to share the files here since it should work one way or another, but with so many variables there's a good chance I missed testing some combination.

Yeahhhh....I deleted it from the entire thing, as when I was editing duplicates it changed the main one? The working one? Something happened I can't recall and again it may have just been my negligence, yikes.

Errr...I'm afraid the power of two thing went entirely over my head, might have to break down what you mean by that.

I did go ahead and try making the particle system again instead setting the right frames, 10, and disabling UV clamping and well...I've had the following screen for a good 10 minutes and counting.

http://prntscr.com/mryzhe

Mayhaps it has something to do with the power of two? Shrug

[vell]

The frames n-1 thing was the solution i found when i was troubleshooting my own trading card wallpaper. all of the spritesheets i use are non square because i was trying to fit the maximum number of frames in it, but from my testing even my square frames always have 1 extra frame i have no idea what the cause is. I also have no idea how the particle would have started on a middle frame unless you accidently changed the start time. Without being able to see the particle system its tricky to find the problem.

[Biohazard]

引用自 vell：

The frames n-1 thing was the solution i found when i was troubleshooting my own trading card wallpaper.

I'm not sure either, but it sounds like a bug. Now when this bug gets fixed that would probably affect your wallpapers too, i.e. removing the last frame I assume. Would you mind sharing textures that you used for random frame sprite sheets?

引用自 vell：

I also have no idea how the particle would have started on a middle frame unless you accidently changed the start time.

With sequence animation it shouldn't start a particle on any middle frame, no. The start time of the whole system would be my only explanation too. When using the random frame mode then it could be any frame though.

---

引用自 Felicity：

Errr...I'm afraid the power of two thing went entirely over my head, might have to break down what you mean by that.

It should ultimately be irrelevant because I tried to make it so that it doesn't matter to anyone using the editor, unless you want to optimize VRAM usage as much as possible. But in the program this is actually a huge complication so it could be part of the issue.

引用自 Felicity：

I did go ahead and try making the particle system again instead setting the right frames, 10, and disabling UV clamping and well...I've had the following screen for a good 10 minutes and counting.

http://prntscr.com/mryzhe

Mayhaps it has something to do with the power of two? Shrug

Maybe there is a stuck compiler process but I'm not aware of it freezing up either, just taking a long time (due to resolution, especially with GIFs). You can kill all resourcecompiler32.exe in the task manager when this happens and the editor should show an error so that you can repeat what you did or reload the wallpaper to make it compile the texture again.

[Elyda]

引用自 Biohazard：

引用自 vell：

The frames n-1 thing was the solution i found when i was troubleshooting my own trading card wallpaper.

I'm not sure either, but it sounds like a bug. Now when this bug gets fixed that would probably affect your wallpapers too, i.e. removing the last frame I assume. Would you mind sharing textures that you used for random frame sprite sheets?

引用自 vell：

I also have no idea how the particle would have started on a middle frame unless you accidently changed the start time.

With sequence animation it shouldn't start a particle on any middle frame, no. The start time of the whole system would be my only explanation too. When using the random frame mode then it could be any frame though.

---

引用自 Felicity：

Errr...I'm afraid the power of two thing went entirely over my head, might have to break down what you mean by that.

It should ultimately be irrelevant because I tried to make it so that it doesn't matter to anyone using the editor, unless you want to optimize VRAM usage as much as possible. But in the program this is actually a huge complication so it could be part of the issue.

引用自 Felicity：

I did go ahead and try making the particle system again instead setting the right frames, 10, and disabling UV clamping and well...I've had the following screen for a good 10 minutes and counting.

http://prntscr.com/mryzhe

Mayhaps it has something to do with the power of two? Shrug

Maybe there is a stuck compiler process but I'm not aware of it freezing up either, just taking a long time (due to resolution, especially with GIFs). You can kill all resourcecompiler32.exe in the task manager when this happens and the editor should show an error so that you can repeat what you did or reload the wallpaper to make it compile the texture again.

Ok so what does the Clamp UV even do because it will not load at all, it's showing it's compiling the assets, it's not frozen, but it's been ages and just nothing is happening?
No matter how many times I attempt to compile it again, nothing.
Should I send you the texture? The wallpaper as a whole? ANYTHING?
Cause I'm just so baffled how something that completely worked before can just not work anymore no matter how I configure it.


EDIT: Can't even compile it Clamped either lol, no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ clue what is going on then.

EDIT EDIT: I made it work again. Had to scrap my entire project and it just worked instantly ??? W.e guess I'm glad it works lol

[Biohazard]

Hm sorry no idea, this wasn't reported before iirc. If I were to guess, perhaps some file got corrupted. If you still have the old broken project I could check it out. The issue with the frame number should be fixed with the next update though, vell send me a project where I could reproduce it.

Unfortunately that would mean, if you were to set up less frames now than the particle *should* have, one frame will disappear once that fix is out.

[Elyda]

引用自 Biohazard：

Hm sorry no idea, this wasn't reported before iirc. If I were to guess, perhaps some file got corrupted. If you still have the old broken project I could check it out. The issue with the frame number should be fixed with the next update though, vell send me a project where I could reproduce it.

Unfortunately that would mean, if you were to set up less frames now than the particle *should* have, one frame will disappear once that fix is out.

Oh it's fine, guess it worked out in the end lol. Seems we may have discovered an issue for ya though so that's dope, sorry for the spam all day I'll go ahead and mark my man Vel's answer for showing me his process, thx again for putting up with my crap haha.

hopefully that fix doesn't mess me up too bad haha.
Thanks again for ya hard work on this program, it's lovely regardless of me being incompetent with it.