Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
box. That will allow you to select the inside section only. When you have it selected, go to the Features tab of
Build menu, and check the Light box. Make it take on a nice 10-meter light glow that is not overpowering but
adds a spirit of light to the interior. Now add in a slight surface glow to the interior section by changing the
Texture settings in the Build menu, when you have that part selected. A glow of 0.05 adds just a nice ambient
light feel to the surfaces inside and augments the effect of making the inner section into a light source. You
should try changing the Texture color to a light purple and Shininess (specular) to low, so the inside, like a
real shell, takes on a nice iridescent tone.
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Now, let's set up a primary particle generator that can be modiied and augmented with other features.
Utilizing the star research from our Hubble Telescope for inspiration, a star-shaped particle is made as a
layered PNG ile. Figure 7.7 shows the layered ile and how the star is made as a white shape on a clear
background. Note that, for visual clarity, the image is shown with a black background in the screen grab of
the Photoshop interface. Included in the content you should upload for this project are the particle textures:
Galaxy_gobo_black.png, and Star_particle_inal.png. Later on, when you are making your own particle
images, remember no particle image should be larger than 512 × 512 pixels.
Once you have uploaded your star particle texture, the next step is to drop it into the content of a cylinder
prim and add in the LSL script shown in Figure 7.7 and Table 7.3. You will ind this script in its LSL format,
named “VWD_book_Project Particle Script,” in the Chapter 7 download content. Open this in a text based
document like WordPad, select and copy it onto your clipboard, and paste it into a New Script inside the
contents of the cylinder prim. Save and close the Script Editor menu showing the new script in the cylinder.
Once you drop the script in the cylinder and it starts up, you will see that these particles are moving
upward, expanding in a narrow explode pattern, scaling up, starting at full opacity, and ending with less
opacity. They are being generated at a set rate per second and living for a certain number of seconds. They
are forming a little distance out from the center of the prim and accelerating in the
z
direction. The wind is
masked, but the emission is on, so they are going to be bright inside dark surroundings and will not move
according to the winds.
Once you have made a particle prim and it is generating stars nicely, you can duplicate it and modify it to
make a whole particle-emitting structure for use inside the Sensory Space. Remember that, for good building
practices and to lower the script load on the server, you should delete the particle scripts from prims once you
get them running; the particles will keep lowing. However, you will not be able to adjust them since you have
deleted the script, so save this step for last and make a copy of the structure for your inventory, just in case.
If you need to adjust the particle low in a prim from which you have cleared the script, just drop the script
back into the prim again and save it.
Once you have the cylinder giving particles in the pattern you want, select it, and hold the Shift key down
while you drag it over to clone it and then change the shape into a sphere. Do this a few more times and
arrange the spheres into a “planetary” system around the center cylinder; change the scale a bit on these
spheres to give some visual variety. In Figure 7.8, you will see how this is done, and as you can see, each
prim is emitting particles just like its fellow clones.
Now, in the Build/Texture menu, change the surface texture to “blank” (to remove the plywood texture)
and color each one of the “planets” a different color. Red, yellow, green, and blue were chosen for this
project. Once you know the color of the sphere, add some glow under the Textures tab (0.2 is ine), and, in
the Build/Feature section, make it a light source with the same color light. Set each light as Intensity = 1.0,
Radius = 10 meters, and Falloff = 0.5. Also, go into the particles script of each prim and change the particle
