I am attempting to create a particle system which simulates random tentacles wiggling in an Ursula type of manor (Ursula the Sea Witch from The Little Mermaid) I was using a prefab particle system (Spiral_02.5.1 tentacle in Particle Ribbon by Moonflower Carnivore) as an example to work off of, yet that particle system didn't provide a lot of context in the way of how to precisely replicate the effect.
What I am trying to do is have "tentacle hair" coming off of the head of a character, wriggling and waving as one would suppose tentacle hair would; However, I cannot get a particle system to even begin to behave as tentacles. I know it is possible since I have a prefab particle system which acts similarly to what I want, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how the creator did it. Please help me, I am at my wit's end with this. I know it is possible and I have exhausted all of my resources on the matter.
I looked at the asset and it is definitely a unique way to approach it. I haven't replicated it myself, but I can give you the gist of it. First the parent particle system doesn't really do anything, I assume they added it so that all the child elements of it can play simultaneously when selected. The second particle system doesn't render anything, but still emits particles from what I see and they're using that to spawn other particles on birth. If you look at the sub emitters you'll see that it uses the last particle system to do this. That one has the rainbow material and uses unique velocity curves and noise to mimic the ribbon effect.
I don't think I'd use this for the tentacles, but you could create your own tentacle material and apply it to that particle system to see if it works fine. Might not look as great with a texture that has unique details on it, the ribbons are made with simple colors which look fine, but details might be easily blurred and/or distorted with this effect.
I got a little closer to what I am trying to do using a lightning tutorial from YouTube, the wiggling and tentacle look are pretty much what I'm going for, but I still can't figure out how to have them wiggling in place instead of emitting out from the center repetitively. The texture I have applied is taken from Particle Ribbon and is only a stand-in for the time being until I can get the particle system to behave in the way I want. This feels like a huge step in the right direction, though I feel hopeless in that there are no direct tutorials for what I am attempting to do.
For clarification, this is just about what I am going for. The tentacles are whipping around, but not jetting outward. It also seems to be made from particles that are emitting outward instead of trails, as I have done in the first video example. It still appears to be tentacles waving, though, and that is my goal here.
OH MY GAWD, I DID IT!!!!!
I used one of the single tentacle particle systems and literally went down the menu and copied the settings exactly and got a single little wiggling tentacle!! now I just have to duplicate and parent them and apply a personalized texture! Thank you for your Help, Jonathan! Though I figured it out somewhat on my own, your guidance got me there!
Great, glad you figured it out. You actually did what I was going to suggest. I can't see the videos you posted, but if you want them to move left and right you'd adjust the velocity along the x axis (or z axis) to move positive and negative over it's life. Using a curve you can have it bounce between positive and negative and it'll move the particles left and right. This lesson from my latest Weather FX course should explain it a bit better: https://cgcookie.com/lesson/spinning-dust-devils in it I went over how to create a smaller tornado like effect and it was created using a velocity curve that moves positive and negative over the life of the particle to have it bounce back and forth between the x and z axis.