in the Particle panel program there is a Lifespan, “age in seconds at which the system (vs. particles) should die”. What does this actually do? Does it clean up all the resources used? Or (how?) will I have to do it manually?
Btw, what is the small Tk window for? I never seen it being used.
That refers to the number of seconds between the time a particular particle first appears and the time it is no longer visible. It has nothing to do with cleanup.
The little Tk window is due to the way Tk works: it expects that it is running as the main application, not a client of another application, so it always insists on creating a “main” window. We don’t use this window, so it’s empty and small.
David
But theres “Life Span” in the “Factory” subwindow. Thats not the “Lifespan” in the “System” subwindow I was talking about.
Which one do you mean?
The description “age in seconds at which the system (vs. particles) should die” belongs to the “Lifespan” in the “System” subwindow.
Sometimes I wonder why its still the official GUI library of Python.
Is it worth adding info on how to use the Particle panel in the manual?
Hmm, I don’t know. Maybe this refers to a larger lifespan of the whole particle generator? Still, it wouldn’t have anything to do with cleanup. There is no auto-cleanup of particle systems.
Please do. This is a major omission from the manual, probably because so few people (including me) have a good understanding of it.
David
I did some test and it looks like it is.
Then how do you do cleanup manually?
But someone will need to confirm that my knowledge is correct before I add it to the manual. I will to post it here first.
OK, I made a sample pdf file to show how I’m doing it:
EDIT
Is this okay?
(the ? means I dont know what it does myself)
EDIT: Some text taken from the Manual. I dont claim it to be my own.
Looks fine so far. I say, go ahead and put this text directly in the manual (it’s a wiki, search the forums for the login link), even in its incomplete form it’s better than not having anything.
David
Um, it will be really weird if people will see sections with nothing but a “?” sign.
It might be better than nothing but it will be weird. I’ll finish it and try to find out as much as I can from those options at least, before I edit the Manual.
Another thing, some informations will be identical in the Particle Panel page and Emitters, Renderers and Factories pages, I can’t think of what to do in this case.
maybe i should link to those pages on those lines instead?
And are people allowed to upload images to panda server?
I have a question about particles panel (or just particles), As far as I understand from Effects and Particles buttons, a single “effect” can have more than one “particle object”? Because that data doesnt seam to be stored. So I dont understand what they are for.
First of all, Anon, thank you for this work (as a user, I think it’s so useful).
I disagree with that: the spirit of a wiki should be collaboration, and one shouldn’t see a lack in a wiki as a defect, but as an occasion to collaborate.
Sure.
I don’t think it is meant to serve as a wiki, it is even mentioned somewhere. That will result in noob edits, vandalism and such. We just dont have enough people in the community who will take care of those on time or any special anti-spam.
Some other engines I have used before had something like a wiki where everyone could contribute, but in my opinion a manual is far better than number of tutorials and articles written by different people and which often repeat each other. However thats just my opinion, I just haven’t seen a quality game engine wiki in practice, it might still be possible. But again, thats not what the creators of the manual were thinking. You can read about it in the “editing guidelines” page.
An update to my contribution
EDIT
And this will probably be the last. I can’t add anything else until someone teaches me more.
The lines starting with “?” mean I could find info about that feature, but I dont understand it myself.
Also there are lines with only a “?” sign. That means I couldnt find anything at all.
Same for whole sections with single line of text- “Undocumented”.
It’s a good contribution. It’s also true that we’d rather not have the manual degenerate into the kinds of kruft that tends to happen to unmoderated wikis, and a page that includes lots of “?” and “undocumented” comments is coming close to that unpleasantness.
Still, I think it would be an acceptable addition to the manual, even in its present incomplete form. There are many other pages in the manual that are similarly incomplete, and people do appreciate even incomplete documentation.
Many thanks for your help!
David
here are the png image files:
4shared.com/file/SeTWfKS7/png_files.html
I dont know if I can upload them to the manual without permission.
Anyway… I hoped you could help me with those ?'s, drwr. 
You can certainly upload images to the manual.
I actually don’t know very much about the particle panel myself, so I can’t be any direct help to fill in the missing details. But perhaps someone else would be willing to help read the Python code and help figure it out?
David
What about the particle system in general?
Most of the widgets have equivalents on these pages:
panda3d.org/manual/index.ph … Parameters
panda3d.org/manual/index.ph … _Factories
panda3d.org/manual/index.ph … e_Emitters
panda3d.org/manual/index.ph … _Renderers
I’m not much of an expert on the particle system in general, either. I can read the code and help you figure it out, but other people can do this, too; and I’m hoping someone will volunteer. 
David
Oh, OK then. I have a feeling that wont happen anytime soon.
So I might just post it as it is, if no one objects.
I created a temp page here:
panda3d.org/manual/index.php/User:Anon
Let me know if you find something wrong.
I’m not really happy with the structuring.
Is it me or wiki ignores newlines?
EDIT:
does it.
The content will be moved to the original page later panda3d.org/manual/index.php … icle_Panel