I'm trying to leave behind a trail as a planet orbits a sun. I want to observe the pattern of the planet after a large number of orbits, so I can tell if something is throwing it off and so forth. I also just like seeing the pretty patterns...
I'm trying to do this using the particle system, and I have a particle trail being left behind my planet now. The problem is, each particle "point" along the trail is sitting there emitting little particles or something. If I zoom in on them, I see each piece of my trial is actually composed of 5 or 6 little particles spreading out from a point. Is there any way to reduce this to a single particle per cycle? Like a "dot" every cycle? I have the particle size cranked up so the trail is nice and bold, and I don't need a billion extra particles swarming around in it doing nothing useful to me.
Also, after a few orbits, the trail stops appearing. I assume there's some kind of hard limit on how many particles can be simulated at once. Can this limit be extended or removed? I know it will tank my frames per second after a few hundred thousand particles... but that's ok. I can come back later and look at the pattern.
currently these are my particle settings:
dbMakeParticles(1,1,1,10);
dbColorParticles(1,255,0,0);
dbSetParticleEmissions(1,1);
dbSetParticleSpeed(1,0);
dbSetParticleVelocity(1,0);
dbSetParticleFloor(1,0);
dbSetParticleGravity(1,0);
dbSetParticleLife(1,50);
dbSetParticleChaos(1,0);
(the code to update the PositionParticleEmissions is elsewhere, but basically has the emitter follow around my planet. It works fine, I just want to know if there's a way to change the settings for the Particle object to go on forever.
I'd also settle for an easier way to draw the trail, if you know one. Is there a way to draw solid circles or dots in 3d space that always turn to face the camera?
