Updates to the particle system (cge-3d-particle-emitter), including editing integrated right inside CGE editor, also improvements to building editor with custom components

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Gallery of Particle System
Particle Effects in 3D
New Particle Effect in 3D

The particle system cge-3d-particle-emitter, developed by Trung Le (Kagamma), has a big update. Now it is possible to edit the particle effects right inside the CGE editor (using CGE editor capabilities to register and edit any component).

Under the movie, we list detailed usage instructions, so read on 🙂

Try it out:

  1. Download the latest cge-3d-particle-emitter code.

  2. Make sure you have the latest Castle Game Engine version, with latest editor and the build tool. We had some important updates to editor lately: fixed rebuilding editor on Windows (needs to wait for previous editor to finish before replacing the EXE), and to define CASTLE_DESIGN_MODE at compilation of custom controls.

  3. Open CGE editor, and open the project cge-3d-particle-emitter/demos/gallery/CastleEngineManifest.xml.

  4. Rebuild the editor to include the custom particle emitter and effect components. Just click on “Project -> Restart Editor (With Custom Components)” to build an editor with project-specific components.

  5. Enjoy! Use the editor as usual. Open the design data/gamestatemain.castle-user-interface to see sample effects and emitters designed. Tweak all their options by exploring properties on the All tab.

Kagamma lists a few more new features in the forum thread:

  • You can now use MiddleParticleSize, which allows to change particle size by performing linear interpolation to certain point (defined by MiddleAnchor) during it’s lifetime.

  • New SourceType property, allows to define the type of emitter source (Box or Spheroid).

  • New Burst property, allows to create burst-type emitter, useful for creating explosion effect.

  • New AllowsUpdateWhenCulled property, very useful if you want to optimize particle’s performance, by stopping it’s updating when particle emitter’s bounding box is outside of view frustum.

  • New AllowsInstancing property. If this is set to True, then you can use the same particle emitter on different transform nodes. Particles are calculated in local space, which means if you move the emitter, then it’s particles will also move with it. If you want particles to be calculated in world space, then set this property to False, which also disable the ability of instancing.

    (It becomes obvious once you play with it visually 🙂 )

  • Despite it’s name, you can also use it in 2D, which means cge-2d-particle-emitter is now deprecated.

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