From what I understand of the particle system in JME2, you generally create a sort of emitter which is a factory that spews out a bunch of particles.
Are these particles part of the scenegraph and is there any way to get a handle on an individual particle?
Also, is there anyway to use an animated gif or a sequence of BMPs for a single particle, for example, if I wanted to have a fire that spews out particles that are constantly switching between 4-5 different flame textures.
Any insights into this system would be extremely helpful.
Thanks.
You basically got it right. Also, theres indeed a method to have the emitter use a tiled texture to display "animated" particles. You set the amout of tiles using ParticleSystem.setTexQuantity() I think. Hidden in jmetest/effects/RenParticleEditor.java is a nice little tool to try around with the particle system.
A particle influence is where you usually write code to do things at particle level.
You can check the code for existing particle influences such as wind, gravity etc. to see how it's done.