Blaster animation point of origin?

[Menelruin]

Reiterating how I've heard that the hardest part of new sets is the animations....is it difficult to simply relocate where on a model a blast attack comes from?  I know there's a few blasts that can vary, like Fire Breath coming from either your mouth or a hand, or X-Ray Blast coming from your eyes or hands.  Also, lots of Sonic blasts can either come from your face or your hands.  It would be cool then if either Beam Rifle could be come a "hand blast" set, OR, if other blasts could be made to come from a weapon of some sort!

 

(Also, I'm still desperately hoping for a shoulder cannon some day!)

[oedipus_tex]

The answer is yes/no/sort of. It depends a lot on how the particle system was put together.

 

The short version of it is something like this:

• Each power has a PFX file that defines the different possible varieties of the power (normal, bright, dark, etc)
• Each section in the PFX file points to various FX files that defines the special effect for each possible event. Typically for blast powers there's an Attack, Hit, and sometimes a Continuing (lingering effects) or Conditional (play this if target got mezzed)
• FX files normally call upon various PART (particle) files. The FX file also determines where each particle it calls originates.
  • Sometimes this is done on a part by part basis
  • Sometimes an origin point is defined for all or most of the FX file and updating that one origin point moves the whole system

 

Moving particles around is technically feasible. Lining them up can be a really timely process though. It might seem like you can just move the system, but with the way Magnets and other effects work doing that sometimes breaks the system in odd ways.