Advanced

The Advanced section sets how often a particle is updated and where particles are kept. It also holds two switches that save work at the moment of emission. Part, Attachment and Model emitters share the section.

What it makes possible:

• A long-lived particle that moves smoothly. Anim. Steps 300 on a Lifetime of 5 seconds gives 60 updates a second.
• A crowd of short-lived particles at less cost. A lower Anim. Steps.
• Particles kept in an instance of your choice. Emit Into.
• A first burst with every picture already loaded. Preload Texture on.
• A stream at a high Rate that uses its finished particles again. Pool on.

The rows

The section starts collapsed. Expand it to see the rows.

Row	Kind	Starts at	Unit	What it does
Anim. Steps	Number	100	Steps	How many times a particle is updated over one Lifetime.
Emit Into	Instance, picked with *	None		The instance that particles are placed in.
Preload Texture	Switch	Off		Part and Model only. Keeps the emitter’s textures loaded, so the first emission shows no blank pictures.
Pool	Switch	Off		Reuses finished particles in place of making new ones. For emitters with a high Rate.

Other emitter types have an Advanced section of their own. It is described on the page of each type.

Anim. Steps

A particle’s life is divided into this many steps. Its position, rotation, size, colour and transparency are worked out again each time the step changes. On a Model emitter the same goes for its scale. Between two steps nothing changes.

Fewer steps cost less and look choppier. More steps look smoother and cost more.

The number of updates each second is Anim. Steps divided by the Lifetime. It cannot be higher than the frame rate.

Anim. Steps	Lifetime	Updates each second	At 60 frames a second
100	1 second	100	Every frame. Smooth.
100	5 seconds	20	Visible stepping.
300	5 seconds	60	Every frame. Smooth.

• Three things run on every frame, whatever Anim. Steps is: following a link, Orientation and Z-Offset.
• With Dir. Mode Local, Anim. Steps sets how finely the bent path is traced.
• A value of 0 or less is treated as 100.
• With Reverse Motion on, a value above 500 counts as 500.

Emit Into

Emit Into names the instance that particles are placed in.

With the row empty, particles are kept in a folder that the plugin manages. Only you can see that folder, and it is never saved with the place.

The instance is picked with the * button in the row’s label. The row accepts any instance. Clear in the picking box empties the row.

Emitter	What Emit Into changes
Part, Model	Where particles are kept. It does not change where they appear.
Attachment	Where particles are kept. If the instance is a Part, the particles also move relative to that Part.

If the Emit Into instance is removed, the particles inside it are removed with it.

The setting is kept in an ObjectValue named EmitParent inside the emitter. See EmitParent, Link, AccelTarget, ShapePart.

Preload Texture

Preload Texture keeps every texture the emitter uses loaded. The first emission then shows no blank pictures.

The switch covers the emitter and everything inside it:

• Decals and Textures, among them the RenderTemplate, the frames in MeshFlipbooks and the textures in MeshFrames.
• The textures of Beams, Trails and ParticleEmitters.
• The images of ImageLabels and ImageButtons.
• The textures of SpecialMeshes and MeshParts.
• All four maps of a SurfaceAppearance.

On a Model emitter the switch covers the whole Model.

Where	When the textures are loaded
In Studio	When the switch is turned on. Again each time the plugin starts with the switch already on.
In the running game	When the Part_Icles module starts on a client. On the server it does nothing.

A script can load and release an emitter’s textures itself, with the module’s Preload and Deload calls. See Scripting.

An Attachment emitter has no Preload Texture row. The setting is the attribute PreloadTexture on the emitter. A script can set it on an Attachment emitter, and it is honoured there too.

Pool

With Pool on, a particle that ends is hidden and used again for a later emission. With Pool off, it is removed, and each new particle is made afresh.

Pool	Each new particle is
Off	A fresh duplicate of the template. A Trail or ParticleEmitter inside the template always starts from the template’s exact state.
On	A finished particle used again, when one is waiting.

• Pool is meant for emitters with a high Rate.
• An edit in the Properties panel discards the waiting particles, so an old look is not used again.
• Pool has no effect in Animate mode.

Limits

• An Attachment emitter has no Preload Texture row.
• In the running game, Preload Texture works on the client only.
• Anim. Steps cannot update a particle more often than the frame rate.
• With Reverse Motion on, Anim. Steps counts as 500 at most.

For an effect that runs slowly, see Slow or stuttering effects.