ParticleAttachement Problems

[LarryG]

I guess this is not a good idea. But I thought I saw someone do this with an elevator to get elevator doors that traveled with the elevator, but maybe that wasn't what was done.

I have a slidy-type door that I gave particle props to and then used a ParticleAttachement (what is with the French spelling here anyway??) link to attach it to a moving terrain. Which works fine, you can frob the door open and everything, but when you turn your back the door re-materializes in the closed position, but without closing, if you know what I mean. If you frob it again it plays the closing slam, but doesn't move, and then another frob will open it, only to have it re-materialize in the closed position when you aren't looking. Edit: And here is the weird thing (well, weirder thing) it only does this if you are on the moving terrain. If you are outside of / off of the moving terrain (MT) the door looks normal. But if you are inside / on the MT, even if it is motionless and not even hooked up or scripted to move, as soon as you take a step on the MT object or jump, the door visually re-materializes. If the door is opening when it re-materializes, it continues opening afterwards. Very strange.

I get it that the particle animation (launched continuously) is probably re-creating it back at the vhot it's attached to and that is the cause of the problem . . . so . . . while I can put walls and a roof on my moving terrain, doors are a non-starter?

I wonder . . . what if I put my vhot a translating joint and make the frobbing of the door trigger it . . . would the door come along for the ride (as it were) if the vhot moved that way . . . ? I can but try, and if it works I can probably hook into the translating door sounds . . . unless someone has a better idea to make a functioning door on moving terrain, or can point up what I may have screwed up on the door I've got.

Suggestions anyone?

Oh also, I've got a lever (rotating jointed object) I have particle-ized and used a ParticleAttachement link to hook up to my moving terrain. Frob it, it rotates like it should, but after rotating "out of the way" it still blocks you from walking through where it was before it rotated. When I look at the bounding box for the lever, that, the bounding box, doesn't rotate with the object, so I suspect that is the issue. Is a rotating or translating door the only object type which takes its bounding box with it as it moves? Is there no way to fix the lever to make it get out of the way?

[Nameless Voice]

I thought you were meant to use PhysAttach for attaching things to tram cars?

If that doesn't work, you can make the doors jointed objects, so the joints open instead of the actual door sliding away - and then you can attach invisible physics bounding boxes to each door's submodel.

[LarryG]

PhysAttach doesn't work with vhots so positioning correctly is difficult in DromEd. That's why I've taken to ParticleAttachement for everything. I can position it in the 3D modeler, stick a vhot there, and when I get to DromEd everything self-assembles.

Can you use PhysAttach on archetypes? I vaguely recall you could only use it on concrete objects . . . I'll see. [EDIT: yeah, you can't put that link between archetypes and have it work.] [EDIT2: And Doors don't work with PhysAttach links. The opening and closing sounds work, but the doors don't move. Much worse than ParticleAttachement links, which I can predefine on the archetypes and which sort of work, kinda-sorta .]

How do you attach bounding boxes to submodels? The problem I am having with the lever is that the submodel doesn't have physics, only the base.

[Nameless Voice]

Attach an invisible object with physics!

[LarryG]

Let me get this right. You want me to:

1. Convert the door to be a jointed (translating) sub-object with zero physics
2. which gets a ParticleAttachment link to the base Moving Terrain object
3. and has, in turn, an invisible door shaped object with a ParticleAttachement link back to it (the zero physics non-door door) and has physics??

And this helps me how?

[R Soul]

Briefly going back to the door problem:

I get it that the particle animation (launched continuously) is probably re-creating it

Try 'attached to object' instead.

I haven't tested it with doors and elevators, but that's the setting I've used NV told me to use when he first told me about this trick.

[LarryG]

Particle Group Motion is "Attached to Object"
Particle Animation is "Launched Continuously"

[Nameless Voice]

Let me get this right. You want me to:

1. Convert the door to be a jointed (translating) sub-object with zero physics
2. which gets a ParticleAttachment link to the base Moving Terrain object
3. and has, in turn, an invisible door shaped object with a ParticleAttachement link back to it (the zero physics non-door door) and has physics??

And this helps me how?

I thought the problem was not being able to open the door (because the particle attachment won't let the door object move), so you could get around that by having it a jointed object (the object itself doesn't move), but then you lose physics on the door. You can re-add the physics by attaching the physics objects to the jointed subobjects.