It's a little bit of a hassle compared to just animating some float params or whatever, but what I usually do when I want something like this is make a preset for the initial state, clone it, and adjust whatever parameters I want for the final state. Then in a trigger, you can execute this sequence of events:
1. Preset Change Time = 0
2. Preset = initial
3. Start
4. Preset Change Time = (however long you want the transition to be)
5. Preset = final
The "Preset Change Time" updates are synchronous, so that will instantly set the initial preset, start the fluids, and then interpolate smoothly to the final preset. It gets more complicated if you want more than just a simple start -> end transition, but that workflow has covered all of my needs so I never experimented further than that
After testing a bit, it seems that the method works with some values but not with all of them.
What I’m fairly sure about:
It works with "Spray Spread Angle", "Stream Spread Angle" and in the Emitter the "Down/Up Rotation".
However, it does not work with "Burst Velocity".
Can you (or someone else) confirm this?
If there’s an explanation for this behavior, I’d appreciate it.