Hey, so just thinking about what different particle systems I can try making, and was wondering if/how you could add animation to meshes you spawned within a particle system, like if you wanted to have a particle system that created zombie hands grasping from the ground, you would want to have the hands animated reaching up and bending the elbows and fingers and such. Just wondering if it is possible and, if it is, if someone could give me a quick rundown of how I might go about it.
You can only emit static meshes from a particle system. Animating arms waving around should be possible using Vertex Animation for each mesh. If you do not need to store any velocity and modify your behavior by this, you should be able to do this complex animation using the Pivot Painter tool and 3dSmax.
Combine this with a Dynamic Parameter and WorldLocation to randomize your animation behavior. This is a bit of an advanced technique, but the only way to animate meshes emitted by Cascade is with Vertex Animation in the material.
I’m using Blender, but anyways I was just wondering what the difference is between vertex animation and a regular skeletal mesh animation if we’re not talking about a regular animation (skeletal mesh) and we’re not talking about morph targets, I’m not sure how to begin putting this together in particles. Are we talking about alembix export or something else altogether or are they slightly similar but still different?