Particles

You would not believe your eyes, if ten million fireflies...

[WARNING - The Particles subnode has been removed in Kopernicus 1.8.1-1, with no replacement. Only use this node if your pack is restricted to KSP 1.7.3 or earlier.]

The Particles { } wrapper node is used to add particles to bodies. You can define several different “species” of particles by using multiple Value { } subnodes. NOTE: Do not use this with a rapidly rotating body. Doing so will yield unintended results that will be easily made apparent after a quick timewarp.

Example

// Credit to Zaffre for rough descriptions of parameters.
Body
{
  Particles
  {
    Value
    {
      target = Sun
      texture = Fruits/PluginData/Tomato_particle.dds

      minEmission = 1.0
      maxEmission = 4.0
      sizeMin = 20.0
      sizeMax = 45.0
      lifespanMin = 500
      lifespanMax = 1250

      speedScale = -0.0000001
      rate = -0.05
      collide = false
      randVelocity = 0.05, 0.05, 0.05
      force = 0,0 0

      Colors
      {
        color1 = 0.9,0.3,0.4,1
        color2 = 0.8,0.6,0.2,1
        color3 = 1,0.7,0.9,1
        color4 = 0.7,0.7,0.7,1
        color5 = 0.6,0.2,0.8,1
      }
    }
  }
}

Property	Format	Description
target	String	The name of the body that the particles move towards/away from.
texture	File Path	The particle texture. Keeping them on the small side is generally a good idea as there will be lots of particles in nearly every case.
minEmission	Single	The particle emission rate.
maxEmission	Single	Does not seem to have an observable effect.
sizeMin	Single	The minimum size of each particle, presumably in unity-units.
sizeMax	Single	The maximum size of each particle.
lifespanMin	Single	The minimum time a particle will exist for, measured in seconds.
lifespanMax	Single	The maximum time a particle will exist for, measured in seconds.
speedScale	Single	The rate of particle movement. A negative rate means particles will move away from the target, while a positive one will make them move towards it. You MUST set them to low values with about the amount of zeroes in the example, be it positive or negative, if you wish to have your particles move at a reasonable rate.
rate	Single	Controls the rate at which particles change scale. Positive rate makes them grow, negative rate makes them shrink.
scale	Vector3	Determines the scale of the particle for each axis in the Vector3.
collide	Boolean	Determines whether the particles have a collision mesh (can collide with each other, and possibly the vessel).
mesh	File Path	The collision mesh of the particles, if `collide` is true. Likely in an .mu format.
randVelocity	Vector3	Chances for a particle to spawn with a random velocity in the X, Y, and Z directions, respectively.
force	Vector3	UNKNOWN. Leading theory is that a force is applied to the particle at the time of its creation using this vector.
Colors	Node	A group of Colors, named `color1` to `color5`. Each particle will randomly choose from one of these five colors to use when it is created. There are five colors due to a restriction in Unity’s legacy particle system.