Particle System & Editor on the works

[guilhermegrg]

hi
I'm new to lwjgl's foruns, so hello to everyone.

I've used lwjgl to build a particle system a year or so ago, and recently i've returned to edit it, because i've been thinking of doing something with Xith3d due to it's facilities - model loaders, scenegraph, etc.

The PS as is was build with lwjgl in mind so, the code isn't quite easy to integrate in xith

Anyways, that is not my immediate goal. The integration is the second goal.

Right now is to finish the alpha version and get it out.
I've been working hard on it - severel hours daily ...university hasn't picked up steam yet ...  - and would like to know impressions / ideias / observations / criticisms, etc.


When the alpha is done, both  the binaries and the source code will be available.


the Horrible^TM GUI from the Editor:


some pics:














A few high res videos:
http://softmed.org/downloads/10.avi
http://softmed.org/downloads/52.avi
http://softmed.org/downloads/6.avi
http://softmed.org/downloads/7.avi

my favourite so far:
http://softmed.org/downloads/test.avi

And a few low res videos:

http://softmed.org/downloads/p1.avi
http://softmed.org/downloads/p2.avi
http://softmed.org/downloads/p3.avi
http://softmed.org/downloads/p4.avi
http://softmed.org/downloads/p5.avi
http://softmed.org/downloads/p6.avi
http://softmed.org/downloads/p7.avi
http://softmed.org/downloads/p8.avi
http://softmed.org/downloads/p9.avi
http://softmed.org/downloads/p10.avi
http://softmed.org/downloads/p11.avi
http://softmed.org/downloads/p12.avi



The good thing about the system is that you can combine different aspects and create some complex things.

My examples don't show it though, because i only had time to try and recreate some basic effects or test some funcionalities.

The gui is definitely going to change a LOT and that is what is going to take me a lot of time in the next few days in order to get something user-friendly and minimally agreable.
Due to the complexity of the interactions between objects, actions on the gui can't make the system crash, otherwise there's problems. So...a lot of debugging is on the horizon...

I can't wait to see what people do with this, and that is one more incentive for me.

[Matzon]

wow, looks very nice!
good job

[Kylearan]

Hi,

my favourite so far:
http://softmed.org/downloads/test.avi

Definitely my favorite too... 

Nice job! I'm looking forward to experiment and use this... 

-Kylearan

[Fool Running]

impressive 

[guilhermegrg]

the major refactoring process I was doing is finished..at last...
i think you're going to like what you can do in there... 

All i'm working now is the GUI.
I've already changed the main layout.
I think a few more days to polish everything and write a small user manual.

Unless something from the Real Life makes me delay...i think sometime in the next 2 weeks it will be online...

[kappa]

looks great, would love to use it in some of my games, will there be some loaders that allow easy plugging into games?

[guilhermegrg]

There already is a loader to read/write from/to XML files. No problems there.
The PS itselft is also detached from how it is rendered.

But everything so far was made using LWJGL and so i can not garantee at this point that integration would be easy. It should be easy if you're already using LWJGL.

But imagine you're using JOGL or you want to integrate it easily with Xith3d or with a scenegraph of your own...

My goal after the alpha is to make that integration as easy as possible so you can pick up the library and put it on your engine and make it work with a minimum of  fuss ...

This first - alpha - release is to evaluate the editor, the particle system, and get people's reactions/ideias/criticisms and also get them to create new PS that can be added to its library so that everyone can benefit from it.

One of the goals is that whatever ppl create in this alpha release will be suported and convertable to the final version.

[guilhermegrg]

Hi
just letting you guys know how this is going.

All major changes to the classes are done. Due to remarks on the other thread, I've reconsidered and this alpha version will have forces, air friction and point masses - to atract particles. Right now I've implemented forces and this afternoon I'll have friction and point masses working.

In principle I'll have the GUI finished by Sunday.
After that i'll spend about a week debugging and improving the gui,creating examples - the ones i've done so far are quite lame considering what you can do - and writing the manual.


My goal is that starting on Sunday, I'll try - TRY - to post on this thread one image and video daily of a new example that looks good, and that shows something interesting from the system.
I think the relase will be done a week from this weekend.

Do keep in mind that this alpha release it NOT that fast. It's quite slow actually and with all effects on, can only show a few thousand particles at interactive rates. Without the more calculation intense effects, it runs about 20K particles at 80 fps without rendering them. If rendering it drops to 20 fps.

File loading and saving speed also dropped a lot due to some alterations i had to do in order to acomodate the randomization solution i chose. It gives you fine control over it, but at some expense - much more info to be saved.

The good news is that i think performance can only go up, because from the point everything is working properly i can focus solely on doing it faster.
And there are a few places where i know i can increase speed.

So to start with, i'm posting here a few new pics & videos:

The new Horrible ^tm GUI, now more horrendous than ever, showind a drop-down list where you select which particle behaviour from those avalable in this particle system, to apply for this generator.


More pics:















And movies of these fx:
http://softmed.org/downloads/f1.avi
http://softmed.org/downloads/f2.avi
http://softmed.org/downloads/f3.avi
http://softmed.org/downloads/f4.avi
http://softmed.org/downloads/f5.avi
http://softmed.org/downloads/f6.avi
http://softmed.org/downloads/f7.avi
http://softmed.org/downloads/f8.avi

[amoeba]

Looks very nice.

Is there going to be the ability to design particle effects, and then somehow load them into another application? Whens the release?

[Fool Running]

Sorry to revive an old thread, but is there any updated news on this?