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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / Plugin for fast particle rendering?

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Quel
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Posted: 30th Sep 2011 22:49
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I saw in the features of this 'Spark 3D' stuff, that it renders the particles using: "DX9 quads or Point Sprites"

This is fascinating....

But what about a simple plugin for being able to access this feature alone, and use it for your self written particle system? Isn't it out there somewhere? If not, why?

-In.Dev.X: A unique heavy story based shoot'em ~35%
-CoreFleet: An underground commander unit based RTS ~15%
-TailsVSEggman: An Sonic themed RTS under development for idea presentation to Sega ~15%
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BatVink
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Posted: 1st Oct 2011 11:36
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free from U73 onwards:

http://www.thegamecreators.com/pages/newsletters/newsletter_issue_74.html#5

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revenant chaos
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Posted: 2nd Oct 2011 05:42
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You can handle point sprites with a shader. A few demos can be found in this thread.
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Quel
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Posted: 4th Oct 2011 18:55
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And how do i angle them? Because for rain this is completely useless when looking at it from an angle... is it even possible to make them not facing the camera / facing anywhere i want?

I also noticed that the particles don't scale up and down as they are getting near or far... this effect is totally 2D in this form. Is it like that for you too?

-In.Dev.X: A unique heavy story based shoot'em ~35%
-CoreFleet: An underground commander unit based RTS ~15%
-TailsVSEggman: An Sonic themed RTS under development for idea presentation to Sega ~15%
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revenant chaos
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Posted: 6th Oct 2011 04:17 Edited at: 6th Oct 2011 04:18
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Quote: "And how do i angle them? Because for rain this is completely useless when looking at it from an angle... is it even possible to make them not facing the camera / facing anywhere i want?"
You can't rotate them (or, at least I don't know of any way) which makes since because those aren't plains like we are used to. Each of those points are a single vertex and so they don't have a rotation angle (not that we can access anyway).

Quote: "I also noticed that the particles don't scale up and down as they are getting near or far... this effect is totally 2D in this form. Is it like that for you too?"
Not at all, use the mousewheel to move away and you can tell that they are indeed being scaled with distance.

You didn't mention that you wanted to simulate rain or I wouldn't have even posted. This type of effect is best used for light flares or bunches of uniformly-shaped particles (things that don't need to rotate).
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Quel
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Posted: 6th Oct 2011 17:34 Edited at: 6th Oct 2011 17:36
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The screwed up thing is that i was so happy it will be a nice alternative for my right now object based weather particle system, it is awesome for snow... but if i have to make separate objects for rain, then the whole thing didn't make any sense.

Though i believe i may use this technique for screen effects, droplets onto the camera of either snow or rain. I just want to make clear that what i see on my screen will be the same on everybody's screen.

I checked again, and found out that they DO SCALE as you get further or closer. But way differently than they are supposed to. I scrolled away until some of them started to go outside the camera range. They did became very small. But it took that long travel for them to dramatically get smaller. And then the scaling up thingy... well it is practically non-existent.

I also can't give them larger particle sizes than the maximum set in the demo code. They just stop at about ~15, thought the code set their sizes to '5.0 + Rnd(50)' which would cause some pretty damn giant glows... but they are almost all the same.

Like it needed some tweaking in the shader, but i don't have any clue which part does what.

Here is some shots showing why i have concerns.

-In.Dev.X: A unique heavy story based shoot'em ~35%
-CoreFleet: An underground commander unit based RTS ~15%
-TailsVSEggman: An Sonic themed RTS under development for idea presentation to Sega ~15%
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Pincho Paxton
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Posted: 6th Oct 2011 17:47
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If you want to make realistic rain, take a look at the Google Images. Basically it just looks like plains with streaks on, and alpha. Scroll the texture down, and that will look more realistic than these particle effects.

http://www.kilbroneyweb.co.uk/wp/2010/09/07/is-autumn-back-already/rain_forest_tropic1/

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Quel
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Posted: 6th Oct 2011 18:51
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To make the rain realistic is the art side, i need to have stable technical environment to start experimenting with the looks.

The comment from me with the attached picture is still the most important aspect of this whole topic, please everybody concentrate on that.

-In.Dev.X: A unique heavy story based shoot'em ~35%
-CoreFleet: An underground commander unit based RTS ~15%
-TailsVSEggman: An Sonic themed RTS under development for idea presentation to Sega ~15%
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chafari
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Posted: 6th Oct 2011 20:55
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@Quel , take a look to one example of Pasky. Attached rar


Cheers.

I'm not a grumpy grandpa
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Quel
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Posted: 7th Oct 2011 00:32 Edited at: 7th Oct 2011 00:32
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Thank you people, but enough of rain, it was just a side note.

I checked again, and found out that they DO SCALE as you get further or closer. But way differently than they are supposed to. I scrolled away until some of them started to go outside the camera range. They did become very small. But it took that long travel for them to dramatically get smaller. And then the scaling up thingy... well it is practically non-existent.

I also can't give them larger particle sizes than the maximum set in the demo code. They just stop at about ~15, thought the code set their sizes to '5.0 + Rnd(50)' which would cause some pretty damn giant glows... but they are almost all the same.

Like it needed some tweaking in the shader, but i don't have any clue which part does what.

Here is some shots showing why i have concerns.


-In.Dev.X: A unique heavy story based shoot'em ~35%
-CoreFleet: An underground commander unit based RTS ~15%
-TailsVSEggman: An Sonic themed RTS under development for idea presentation to Sega ~15%
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Sasuke
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Posted: 7th Oct 2011 00:47 Edited at: 7th Oct 2011 00:49
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Point Sprites have an issue with not being compatibles with every card. What it affects is what you pointed out, it's a known issue that scale and scale limitation differs on different GPU's making point sprites hard to implement. Usually people opt out for a billboard quad system like I have, but in DBP it isn't that great since DBP can't handle lots of objects.
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