New 3D Magic Wand (i.e. Particle Effects)

[Jonathan Thomas]

A new particle effects generator needs to be added, to allow for sparkles and particle effect animations. This is very commonly used as magic wand effects. This needs to be based in Blender, and expose many of the particle effect settings, such as:

Location: X
Location: Y
Location: Z
Diffuse Color
Specular Color
Mirror Color
Specular Intensity
Alpha
Halo: Size
Halo: Hardness
Halo: Use Lines
Halo: Line Count
Halo: Use Rings
Halo: Ring Count
Halo: Use Stars
Halo: Star Count
Halo: Use Flare
Particles: Amount

[Jonathan Thomas (jonoomph)]

I added a few more options, to make this more flexible:
  - Particles: Lifetime
  - Particles: Gravity
  - Velocity: X
  - Velocity: Y
  - Velocity: Z

These options allow the particles to move in any direction, and even
change the force of gravity.

[Olivier Girard (eolinwen)]

Very interesting. bravo! Jonathan.

[Jonathan Thomas (jonoomph)]

Here is an example picture of particles shooting out of some grass. This animation uses no gravity, and a positive Y velocity. The particles are transparent, and can easily be composited on top of any other videos or images.

[Jonathan Thomas (jonoomph)]

I finally figured out how to script against the keyframe API in Blender. So... the Magic Wand animation now supports 2 keyframes, a starting position and ending position. Because the particles are affected by gravity, the particles realistically react to how fast you move the magic wand.