On Mon, 03 Dec 2001 02:53:35 +0100, Tim Nikias <Tim### [at] gmxde>
wrote:

>Hi there!
>
>Well, I am programming a particle system for POV-Ray and have designed
>in a fashion which makes
>almost anything customizable (when I'm speaking of design, I mean
>algorithms, it's text-based, like POV).
>
>Now, what I was wondering:
>What exactly should a particle system be able to handle? Not only do I
>want to see if I can cover the
>demands by checking if the macros can supply the needed basis for people
>to program the algorithms using
>the macros, but also, I think it would be great if one could have sort
>of a check-list to see, what one should
>think about to create an awesome particle system.
>Hope you get the idea...
>
>Well, I'll begin with something simple:
>Particle-Systems should definitely have some sort of Emitter, e.g.
>definable areas, in which the particles are born.
>

Mhm, here's a good feature list:

Emitters:
 spherical, cone and object emitter (object emitter=particles are on
the surface of and object and have initial speed=normal*factor)
 controls for: initial speed, accelleration, position, speed
randomness, accell rondomness, position randomness, die age, die age
randomness, initial color, initial color randomness, particle die mode
(hit-die,age-die,speed-die).

Particles:
 hit detection-rebound, color control: speed based, age based,
accelleration based (mhm there should be a speed, age etc variable for
every particle, and then I should be able to attach those variables to
color channels or to any other value... like phong highlight etc...)
 ability to attach a generic object to every particle (blob, sphere,
light, point etc) with or without orientation (mhm you can calc object
oriet. by using particle speed vector or by adding a normal vector to
particles... this would allow spinning objects)
 point and line particles

Forces:
 normal (linear), vortex, bend, attractor

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