Chris, This sounds very familiar. :-( We should get together on this. I checked in my second pass on a generalized particle system into cvs.j3d.org at the weekend. First pass was checked in several weeks ago.
The current code is pretty stable, comes with a simple example and I've written ParticleFunctions for wind, gravity, picking-collisions, physics and a couple of others. I'd appreciate any comments. I have abstracted the display characteristics of a particle from the engine itself, so it is possible to represent particles using Sphere's, BY_REF arrays, VRML models, whatever happen to suit the application at hand. Sincerely, Daniel Selman Author - "Java 3D Programming" http://www.manning.com/selman -----Original Message----- From: Discussion list for Java 3D API [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Chris Forrester Sent: Monday, March 11, 2002 11:41 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Particle System I just wanted to say that i've gotten a 1.2.1 particle system working that uses a giant QuadArray and BY_REFERENCE members for quick insertion/removal. Particles are defined as quads with their own offset transforms (for scaling/rotation/position offset) and hook into a simple position/direction/lifetime particle movement system. These quads all share Appearance data as well, so you can create alpha/additive textures and apply them the object to get cool particle effects. For numbers, I can get decent performance with (tested so far) 400 particles on the screen (with one texture unit) at once. This totally blows away the other method I've tried for a system, which was individual TriangleStripArray's per particle. With that system, I capped out at 40. For the future, i'm going to optimize the particle removal/cleanup system, and as soon as the boys at StarfireResearch update their 3dsmax importer(or I can get a copy of the maxsdk to build my own) I'll update to the latest beta of J3D, so that I can convert the Quads to TriangleStripArrays for more performance (problem right now is that J3D 1.2.1 doesn't allow re-setting the strip indices) So, to summarize: (1 Shape3d object, with X number of particles) per Appearance. Fast particle performance. Cool effects like additive mode. No reliance on a Java2d layer. If anyone would like more info about this project, feel free to email me, and i'll get back to you within a day or so. Cheers. Oh - One more note, I'm using the DirectX J3D, so my Quad performance (or so it would seem reading the postings/tutorials) is much lower than if I were running the OpenGL version. =========================================================================== To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body of the message "signoff JAVA3D-INTEREST". For general help, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body of the message "help". =========================================================================== To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body of the message "signoff JAVA3D-INTEREST". For general help, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include in the body of the message "help".
