So, last night my PC had some work to do, and generated this little
animation. 1h28min parsing and 6h45min tracing (all that media, as always)
for 150 frames at 52x384 on a 2.4GHz Athlon XP. There are roughly 2500
particles in this scene. The different particle effects don't interact with
each other, fire, water and smoke are all just timed effects. Note that the
water particles break up into smaller droplets once they hit an object.

Basically, I wanted a rather simple scene which shows a few uses for the
particle system. Rune suggested depicting some "natural" phenomenon (rather
than my usual technical stuff) for an example animation/scene, and this is
what I did!

I know, some of the particles are easily identifiable as single particles,
and the fire doesn't look too convincing. But instead of loading the scene
full of SDL which no one understands, I wanted some plain and simple code
for the End-User to dissect and look at, and of which he can easily see the
effect.

So, criticism and comments are welcome. Once this scene is done and
approven, I'll wrap things up and release the particle system. :-)

Regards,
Tim

-- 
"Tim Nikias v2.0"
Homepage: <http://www.nolights.de>

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Attachments:
Download 'parsys_ex.mpg' (459 KB)

Very nice! :) This is exactly the kind of scene I was talking about. In
fact I think I had planned to make a similar animation (water putting
off a fire) for my own particle system, but never got around to doing
it.

Back to your animation. For some reason, once the water hits the ball, I
think it looks more like ice particles than like liquid water. I think
that is because water doesn't bounce nearly that much, but rather just
flow along the surface to get "out of the way". Try to open your nearest
tab and watch the water as it hits the sink - it doesn't bounce into a
lot of water drops, it just slides along the surface...

As you say, the fire could be improved, but it still looks quite fine,
and the smoke looks really good! Overall a cool example animation. :)

Rune
--
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rune|vision:  http://runevision.com **updated Mar 9**
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> Very nice! :) This is exactly the kind of scene I was talking about. In
> fact I think I had planned to make a similar animation (water putting
> off a fire) for my own particle system, but never got around to doing
> it.

Finally! We've had the same idea but *I* made it first! ;-)

> Back to your animation. For some reason, once the water hits the ball, I
> think it looks more like ice particles than like liquid water. I think
> that is because water doesn't bounce nearly that much, but rather just
> flow along the surface to get "out of the way". Try to open your nearest
> tab and watch the water as it hits the sink - it doesn't bounce into a
> lot of water drops, it just slides along the surface...

Hm, yeah, might be right. I figured that the water drops from a higher
altitude, but then again, rain drops don't splash into tiny particles that
fly hundreds of meters up again... :-) I'll experiment a little more until I
can come up with a good-looking solution.

> As you say, the fire could be improved, but it still looks quite fine,
> and the smoke looks really good! Overall a cool example animation. :)

Thanks! The smoke is actually only made of 8 big particles with rather low
media-settings, and the fire has this 3D-gamish style, which I like for
simple animations, especially for particle-beginners: it makes the algorithm
a little easier to visualize.

Regards,
Tim

-- 
"Tim Nikias v2.0"
Homepage: <http://www.nolights.de>

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Now thats really good.

-- 
Rick

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[SNIP]
> Back to your animation. For some reason, once the water hits the ball, I
> think it looks more like ice particles than like liquid water. I think
> that is because water doesn't bounce nearly that much, but rather just
> flow along the surface to get "out of the way".
[SNIP]

So, how about this? Water is less "splashy" now, but maybe it's still too
much. I'll have to run a few more tests tomorrow to get it correct. I'll try
one without any "splash" at all, but I'll have to greatly modify the macro
that creates the splashing effect (as it places new, smaller particles and
their velocities based on the original particle, hence, when doing a less
splashy effect, I need a different calculation for the velocities).

Regards,
Tim

-- 
"Tim Nikias v2.0"
Homepage: <http://www.nolights.de>

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Attachments:
Download 'water.mpg' (397 KB)

> Now thats really good.

Thank you very much! :-)

-- 
"Tim Nikias v2.0"
Homepage: <http://www.nolights.de>

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Tim Nikias v2.0 wrote:
> So, how about this? Water is less "splashy" now,
> but maybe it's still too much.

To be honest, I can't see any difference... :(
Except that the water spreads a bit wider on the ground, but that was
not the issue.

I just tried the sink test I described and the water does indeed just
slide off the surface without bouncing up at all. See attached sketch...

Rune
--
3D images and anims, include files, tutorials and more:
rune|vision:  http://runevision.com **updated Mar 9**
POV-Ray Ring: http://webring.povray.co.uk

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Attachments:
Download 'water_splash.jpg' (6 KB)

Preview of image 'water_splash.jpg'

> To be honest, I can't see any difference... :(
> Except that the water spreads a bit wider on the ground, but that was
> not the issue.
>
> I just tried the sink test I described and the water does indeed just
> slide off the surface without bouncing up at all. See attached sketch...

Allright, here's the latest. The particles now divide into several smaller
ones, where the upward direction is limited to a certain degree.
Additionally, droplets don't rebounce but just slide along surfaces. This
looks pretty convincing to me, and I think this is what I'll stick to. Now
on to another over-nighter. :-)

Thanks for the comments!

Regards,
Tim

-- 
"Tim Nikias v2.0"
Homepage: <http://www.nolights.de>

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Attachments:
Download 'water_2.mpg' (383 KB)

This looks much better. :)

Rune
--
3D images and anims, include files, tutorials and more:
rune|vision:  http://runevision.com **updated Mar 9**
POV-Ray Ring: http://webring.povray.co.uk

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Tim Nikias v2.0 wrote:
>>To be honest, I can't see any difference... :(
>>Except that the water spreads a bit wider on the ground, but that was
>>not the issue.
>>
>>I just tried the sink test I described and the water does indeed just
>>slide off the surface without bouncing up at all. See attached sketch...
> 
> 
> Allright, here's the latest. The particles now divide into several smaller
> ones, where the upward direction is limited to a certain degree.
> Additionally, droplets don't rebounce but just slide along surfaces. This
> looks pretty convincing to me, and I think this is what I'll stick to. Now
> on to another over-nighter. :-)
> 
> Thanks for the comments!
> 
> Regards,
> Tim
> 

i know, picky, pickie

grass surface does not appear flat, shouldn't it puddle up a bit?


as an aside, i wish i could even guess as to how to approach even trying 
to do something like this

stephen

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