My fun with RawParticles

RedcrowProd · 12-22-2016 07:04 AM

inspired by http://www.esenthel.com/forum/showthread...wParticles

hello guy, here to talk about the RawParticles!

what is it ? RawParticles is pretty much a lighter version of Particles and for that reason have better performance.

there's little to no information in tutorials, and forum discussion.

here is my little 2 cents to help the next person interested by this

What i tried to do is to set some particles to immitate rain
it is fairly easy and looks like particles in the idea.

First i set up my class that will carry rawparticles information as i like to do.

Code:

class MyRawParticlesAttributs

{   

   // save pos for next frame update as we dont want to reset pos every frame.

   flt posx; 

   flt posy; 

   flt posz;

   Color myColor;

   flt myRadius;

   void SetRandom() // used at creation / respawn. can be improve to create particles where rain drop down.

   {

      posx=RandomF(Plr.pos().x-100, Plr.pos().x+100);

      posy=RandomF(Plr.pos().y+50, Plr.pos().y+100);

      posz=RandomF(Plr.pos().z-100, Plr.pos().z+100);

      int randomLight=Random(150, 200); int randombrightness=Random(150, 255);

      myColor=Color(randomLight, randomLight, randomLight, randombrightness);

      myRadius=RandomF(0.3, 1);

   }

   void SetLinear() // linear update of the particle

   {

      posy-=Time.rd()*50;

      posx-=0;

      posz-=0;

   }

}

C int MyRawParticleArrayNumber=5000; // setting up n° of particles wanted

RawParticles RawParticles_Atmo;

RawParticles.Particle particleArray[MyRawParticleArrayNumber];

MyRawParticlesAttributs particleArrayAttribut[MyRawParticleArrayNumber];

in create anywhere in your code : just set it up for the update to work correctly

Code:

RawParticles_Atmo.palette(false).create(UID(2049046545, 1233068177, 1469235131, 745495318));

   REP(MyRawParticleArrayNumber)particleArrayAttribut[i].SetRandom();

nb: i couldnt get palette(true) to work for some reason, so i used RM_BLEND instead.

Put this in your game update

Code:

REP(MyRawParticleArrayNumber)

   {

      particleArrayAttribut[i].SetLinear();

      if(particleArrayAttribut[i].posy<=Game.World.hmHeight(Vec2(particleArrayAttribut[i].posx, particleArrayAttribut[i].posz)))

      {

         particleArrayAttribut[i].SetRandom();

      }

      particleArray[i].radius = particleArrayAttribut[i].myRadius;

      particleArray[i].vel    = Vec(0, 0, 0); // do not care about vel

      particleArray[i].color  = particleArrayAttribut[i].myColor;

      particleArray[i].pos = Vec(particleArrayAttribut[i].posx, particleArrayAttribut[i].posy , particleArrayAttribut[i].posz);

   } 

   RawParticles_Atmo.set(&particleArray[0], MyRawParticleArrayNumber);

nb : confusing about how to set them correctly, might be wrong. might be right.

in drawing

Code:

case RM_BLEND:

{

RawParticles_Atmo.draw();

}break;

some images :

Quote:

please let me know if anything is wrong/needs improvement smile

added a link to EE project here : http://www.filedropper.com/rawparticles

thanks !

Zervox · 12-22-2016 07:26 AM

I'd love to test it, but I think it would be easier to upload an EsenthelProject file to dropbox so that you just have to execute the project to open it in the Editor.(christmas laziness) smile

RedcrowProd · 12-22-2016 07:45 AM

ahah yeah got cha

added a project file for this smile

http://www.filedropper.com/rawparticles

Zervox · 12-22-2016 08:14 AM

Code:

void SetRandom(RawParticles.Particle &p) // used at creation / respawn. can be improve to create particles where rain drop down.

   {

      Vec cpos=Cam.matrix.pos;

      p.pos.set(RandomF(cpos.x-100, cpos.x+100)

      , RandomF(cpos.y+50 , cpos.y+100)

      , RandomF(cpos.z-100, cpos.z+100));

      int randomLight=Random(150, 200); int randombrightness=Random(150, 255);

      p.color=Color(randomLight, randomLight, randomLight, randombrightness);

      p.radius=RandomF(0.3, 1);

   }

   void SetLinear(RawParticles.Particle &p) // linear update of the particle

   {

      p.pos.y-=Time.rd()*50;

      p.pos.x-=0;

      p.pos.z-=0;

   }

REP(MyRawParticleArrayNumber)

   {

      RawParticles.Particle &pp=particleArray[i];

      SetLinear(pp);

      if(pp.pos.y<=Game.World.hmHeight(pp.pos.xz()) || pp.pos.y<=0)

      {

         SetRandom(pp);

      }

      pp.vel = Vec(0, 0, 0); // do not care about vel

   }

I just wrote it like this, mostly since I hate having duplicate arrays wasting memory instead of having a proxy being a basically a copy of the actually used structure. smile

Zervox · 12-22-2016 09:15 AM

Was really fun upping it to 100k. smile

overall nice job, this might let others learn very easily how to use the RawParticles. smile

RedcrowProd · 12-22-2016 09:38 PM

Hah yes this could use some polishing.

**Esenthel** · 12-23-2016 12:15 AM

It looks cool.

But for rain effect, you'd have to set particle 'angle' member too, so for example when looking up and down, the rain drops rotate correctly.

Remember that particles rotate only in 2D space, so for true 3D rotation, you'd have to forget particles, and use VI with faces (quads).

RedcrowProd · 12-23-2016 02:46 AM

it is true, this was more of an exemple, and i was immitating rain as for this, but i believe this system could work fine for snow or other effect like that.

as for the problem of the rotation of the particles, you could bypass this problem , just modifying the image used after a certain camera angle, and even more, setting up different layer based on how closed it is from the camera.

i havent tried vi much atm, is the perf would be comparable to using raw particles, using vi with quads faces ?

Zervox · 12-23-2016 03:04 AM

if you are first going to use VI then I'd take the step towards Geometry-Compute shader to offload everything onto the gpu and not stroke your GPU bandwidth along with it. of course that would require source access.

My fun with RawParticles
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