Hi,
I try not to make a habit of asking for an escalator at every mountain i need to climb ^_^
but there are only a few things left on my "before I get started on a 3D game" check list, so on this one any help would be very helpful.

Does anyone know a basic raw 3d particle effect tutorial?
or an easy to implement 3d particle system? ^_^

most of what I know I learn from messing around and expanding someone elses basic code
but first i need to apply it to my test game the easier to implement the better.

is there anything really important about 3d particle effects that i should know?

I know so far that it is just like the 2D one but u need to calculate the rotation and distance to make it seem 3D. I think that's right.

Any help would be most appreciated,
Thank you, ^_^
Luke.

*ding!* (sound of elevator stopping at your floor ;) )

I can personally vouch for it - it's crazy fast, and extremely easy to implement.

LOL Thank you ^_^.. this look like what I need.

But, the elevator doors have jammed! :-(
I'm getting some weird errors when I try to implement it into my code.

I copied all the files into my project and added the ParticleSettingsWindows solution.
I haven't changed my game1.cs code yet because i want to make sure it at least loads first.

I'm trying to add it to the 3D spaceship beginners tutorial

at first i got this:
Error    1    There was an error while deserializing intermediate XML. Cannot find type "Particle3DSample.ParticleSettings".    C:\Documents and Settings\Luke\My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\BG_3D_Chapter10\BG_3D\Content\ExplosionSettings.xml    3    10    BG_3D

then i added the reference ...VideoImporters(I think that was right?)

then the error changed to:
Error    1    XML element "R" not found.    C:\Documents and Settings\Luke\My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\BG_3D_Chapter10\BG_3D\Content\Models\enemy.tga    1    323    BG_3D

I know there's a great particle effect tutorial for the 2D space ship tutorial.. but I can't find one like that for the 3D one. that's why I'm trying to add this..
Does anyone know what's wrong?

Thank you,
Luke.

Don't worry, I'm a few floors up hot wiring the elevator door control system! ;-)

First, make sure that you have the correct version. If your game uses XNA 3.0 then get the 3.0 version, and if you're using XNA 3.1 then grab the 3.1 version (which from what I've heard is even better since it does away with the content type readers and writers - automatic XNB serialization FTW!).

Once that's out of the way, what is most likely happening is that you aren't setting the correct content importer, processor and build type in the properties section for the particle settings XML files. Open up the particle sample's project and click on the ExplosionSettings.xml file in the solution explorer, and make note of the properties (hit F4 to bring them up if they aren't visible).

Also, VideoImporters has nothing to do with the particle system... Where did you add the reference to it? If you set the content processor/importer of enemy.tga to use something else such as a video importer, then that would explain the new problem.

Let me know if this works!

Ok, The doors are almost open! ^_^ a little more and I'll be able to squeeze though the crack!

Thanks for Replying ^_^
I just checked all of the properties of all the files to make sure, and they all seem to match :-(.??

I added the video importers framework because it was the only thing I could see what was missing and the original had it for some reason? 0.o
but i removed it and like you said the error went away ^^

I'm not sure if the following link was about the same problem but i tried that too and it didnt seem to fix a thing..
http://forums.xna.com/forums/p/10923/57370.aspx#57370 (Jim Welch's post I think)
my game isnt much of a game atm ^^ but here it is. MyGame

oh and this is what I downloaded I got the 3.1 to mach my XNA version. Authoring-Particle-Systems-Using-XML-and-the-Content-Pipeline

also it had "<Asset Type="Particle3DSample.ParticleSettings">" in the xml files so i changed it to <Asset Type="BG_3D.ParticleSettings"> I think that part was right?

Any help would be most appreciated
Thanks again! ^_^,
Luke.

Alright, the doors are officially open!

Here's the fixed version. There were a couple of problems I fixed:

1) The content processor was not set to "ParticleProcessor" on some of the XML files
2) There were several files missing in the game project that the particle system needs.
3) The ParticleSystem file had a bunch of stuff in it that shouldn't have been there - I copied over a clean version from the sample.
4) You shouldn't have changed the namespace in the XML files to point to your project. They're looking for files that exist only in the ParticlePipeline project.

Now, go load your game up with particles! ;-) (just be sure to check Xbox performance every now and again, since they tend to suck up performance when you have 30,000 of them at once. But boy does it look awesome on the PC!)

Thank you so much UberGeekGames! you helped me a lot!
The doors open widely as you fly back up the mountain ^_^

And thanks for the tips I actually almost forgot about checking on the XBOX, (that could have been messy ^_^)
I'll keep that number in mind when using them I'm sure i'll have to use all my restraint not to go crazy though
because they do look awesome!!!!

Thank you again,
Luke.