Add a "Fixed" ParticleEmitter orientation

Feature Requests Engine Features
#1

As a Roblox developer, it is currently too hard to make particles always face the same direction.

I propose a new orientation be added called “Fixed” that exposes a new Vector3 property determining the direction all emitted particles will face. This would be in object space or world space depending on LockedToPart.

If Roblox is able to address this issue, it would improve my development experience because there are many cases where I want particles to always face one direction, but VelocityPerpendicular is intertwined with velocity which isn’t always ideal.

For example, I wanted to add ripple effects to a custom swimming system I made while the player is on the surface. If I could make ripple particles always face upward, I could just parent them to the character’s RootAttachment rather than moving around a part or attachment somewhere in the workspace to emit from.

Another use case could be having particles move parallel to a flat surface. Currently, VelocityPerpendicular can’t accomplish this because the particles can only move along the surface if they are perpendicular to it.

fixedparticleorientation
fixedparticleorientation865×476 360 KB

The addition of the orientation property to ParticleEmitters has been insanely useful and I think this would make it even better.

25 Likes
#2

This is really needed. I have so many use cases for this.

My main use for this will probably be for objects like falling leaves or paper/money flying and spinning around.

If we had an orientation property too that’d make control far easier too for effects such as this.

Currently it’s impossible to have flipping or spinning particle planes without doing weird stuff with velocity which doesn’t give the effect we need at all

3 Likes
#3

I love your proposition especially when I’m working with visual effects–another thing that could be useful with this is if there was a checkbox that can switch the particle’s orientation once it touches something like a ceiling, similar to gas being released in a box.

2 Likes