Another spiraling solution

So I talked to Adam tonight about getting the particles to flow around a path. He suggested that I do everything in nurbs and use a per-particle attribute that flows along the u and v coordinates.

Honestly I hate nurbs... I know they arent that bad to work with, its just I dont feel comfortable with them. Frustrated, I kept thinking of more solutions...

Then it hit me! UV's!

With a spiraling polygon, I can layout the UV's so that line up in a perfectly vertical strip. Kind of like a film strip.
By animating a procedural texture map of dots in the vertical direction along the vertical UV's, the effect will be dots flowing along a spiraling surface.

I will do a test tonight! Thanks Adam Burr!