Confetti Cannon Trigger (Help)

Hi  Otfcodyp,

Sounds awesome! Let's do it. 

First lets make our particle use external time--that way we can set when we want the particle to play. In your Resources panel, select your particle's material, and in the Inspector panel tick "External Time"

Then let's create a new script to control this External Time parameter.

In the Objects panel, select the object which contains your particle's Mesh Visual. Then, in it's Inspector panel press "Add New" and select script. Press "Add Script". In the dialog box, press "Add New" > Script. 

Then locate this new script in your Resources panel and edit it. 

In this script we first want to access the Mesh Visual so we can access the particle. 

var meshVis = script.getSceneObject().getFirstComponent("Component.MeshVisual");

Then we'll set up a variable to track the start time of our particle. We'll also create an event which will set this variable when the user opens their mouth. 

var startTime;

function onMouthOpened()
{
 startTime = getTime();
}
var updateEvent = script.createEvent("MouthOpenedEvent");
updateEvent.bind(onMouthOpened);

Finally, on every frame update after the user has opened their mouth (startTime is set), we can calculate how many seconds have elapsed since then and set that as our particle's external time!

function update()
{
 if (startTime) {
 var particleTime = getTime() - startTime;
 meshVis.mainPass.externalTimeInput = particleTime; 
 }
}
var updateEvent = script.createEvent("UpdateEvent");
updateEvent.bind(update);

So our final script looks something like: 

var meshVis = script.getSceneObject().getFirstComponent("Component.MeshVisual");
var startTime;

function update()
{
 if (startTime) {
 var particleTime = getTime() - startTime;
 meshVis.mainPass.externalTimeInput = particleTime; 
 }
}
var updateEvent = script.createEvent("UpdateEvent");
updateEvent.bind(update);

function onMouthOpened()
{
 startTime = getTime();
}
var updateEvent = script.createEvent("MouthOpenedEvent");
updateEvent.bind(onMouthOpened);

Let me know if I can clarify anything. Can't wait to see what you make!

Cheers,

Jon

Hi Otfcodyp,

The particles stopping is a good first step--since it will allow us to start the particles!

Do you see any error in the Logger panel? 

Just to make sure: Is the script attached to the same object as where the particles' mesh visual is attached (see screenshot above)? And please make sure the script is set to initialized. Finally don't forget to open your mouth, since that is what we set the script to trigger on.

If it's still not working, yes the file will definitely help :)

Thanks!

Jon

Hi Otfcodyp,

Thanks for sending the file! This Lens is looking cool.

Should I be looking at the Splat particle? I can't see the particle system even when I turned off External Time?

But I did notice a few things:

• Please make sure that the objects are enabled to begin with (otherwise the script can't run). We can control the particle's visibility using External Time.
• Additionally, it looks like the Splat Particle Script is set to Mouth Opened--please set it to Initialized. This should be set on Initialized because the script creates the Mouth Opened event when it runs. 

Thanks!

Hi Otfcodyp,

Glad to hear you got it to work!

I took at the file you uploaded, it looks like some of the png can be compressed to reduce Lens size. For example, "floating on top Sticker_0" can be reduced several mb. You can use something like TinyPNG.com to help you with this. Please take a look at the following pages for additional information:

https://lensstudio.snapchat.com/guides/2d/2d-optimization/

https://lensstudio.snapchat.com/guides/submission/performance-and-optimization/

Can't wait to see what you come up with :)

Cheers,
Jon