Tim Nikias v2.0 wrote:
> Yeah, it should be possible, but there's more work
> required than just adding a few lines...

Yeah, it was mostly said in fun... :)

> For my next project involving particles, I plan
> on doing a massive I/O project, where particles
> may even be given away from a system into an
> external file, where a different system might
> look for it and do things with it. This should
> make a wide variety of effects possible, where
> different effects are done by smaller
> include-files. Also, I could achieve effects
> much more defined to a certain topic, e.g. in
> a certain area, particles attract each other,
> in a different one, a particle gets split into
> two different ones, etc.

Yeah, that would be interesting. For my system, I decided to draw the
line a specific place. I wanted to have my system have full support for
looping animations, and if other features were incompatible with that,
then I didn't want to implement them. I may sound like a odd feature to
put so much focus on, but its because the looping support actually is
rooted deep in the entire way the system is coded.

The fact that the system is coded this way also makes it efficient for
rendering animations in several passes. The simulation don't have to be
calculated all from the beginning, but only for as long back as a
particle lives. All particles that are dead at the beginning frame of
the animation have no effect on the current state, so they are
disregarded completely.

The main feature incompatible with looping is particle interaction, so
my system has no support for that at all. That puts a great restriction
on my system, but as I said, that's where I chose to draw the line.

Your future particle system project sounds interesting. I've considered
a similar project, but I don't think I'll do it after all. After my last
particle system, I've become a bit tired of making large, generic,
user-friendly and well-documented include files. It's rewarding in the
end, but it's a whole lot of work, and given that the POV-Ray userbase
of users who are both able to and willing to use such advanced include
files is pretty small, I've found that I don't feel it's really worth it
(for me). It's good to know though, that there are others to take over!
;)

In the future I probably will make smaller include files for my own use,
which are very good at performing a very specific task, but which are
not very generic, nor user-friendly, and probably not documented at
all... ;) That will probably save 80% of the workload! I intent to be
more of a programming artist than a developer...

Rune
--
3D images and anims, include files, tutorials and more:
rune|vision:  http://runevision.com (updated Oct 19)
POV-Ray Ring: http://webring.povray.co.uk

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