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Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Pulse Particle System + Flash IDE

I did a bit of work to see what I could do to get a workflow with the Flash authoring environment and the Pulse particle system working. I got it to a point where I can download, install, and show a quick example of how to use it in a 4 minute video. Not too bad.


Some more links:
The particle system itself is still a bit rough, there's a bit of choppiness here and there that I need to work out, and there's a bunch more options (like acceleration) I'd like to tackle. That, and a bit more on the documentation side would be nice.

Update, Here's a nice demo from the comments below. It has an animated movieclip as a particle and looks pretty cool.

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posted by Marc at 6:47 PM

8 Comments:

  • Thanks for sharing this great extension! Any idea when the documentation will be available? Where do I find the base classes?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 1/10/2008 9:28 AM  

  • Documentation is always the hardest thing to get done, since it's the least fun :( ASDocs will be coming soon, I just need to modify my ant script to post them. Then, I'll make some light documentation with a few more tutorial videos. After that I'll be writing the more in-depth docs.

    On the google code page theres a link for the source to the engine code. The component is really just an instantiation of the MovieClipParticle in that archive. I'll try to get the .fla posted as well sometime.

    By Blogger Marc, At 1/10/2008 9:47 AM  

  • Great component! I had a little fun with it: http://jfoley37.googlepages.com/particles.html

    Made the polyhedron in Swift 3D and then pointed the pulse particle to it.

    Got a few ideas for ya...

    What would be nice is if you set up the particles to follow a flow path. For example: if I set up a water piping tube and then wanted water to flow down the tube... I'd imagine that it would be similiar to your swarm parameter but it would simply makes its way down a path set by an array and it would prolly have a diameter setting to control how thick the line of particles would be.

    Another idea would be to make a particle region or a particle line emitter. In the particle line emitter it would simply emit particles along a line (ideal for rainfall or snow). The particle region would generate particles at random within a set region. I've seen both these ideas in 3ds max.

    Cheers and thanks for sharing this great awesome component.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 1/10/2008 10:58 AM  

  • I'd like to second Jim's comments. If you post a paypal badge I'd be happy to donate. I know how hard it is to maintain a "free" project when the paying ones usually take priority.

    Thanks marc!!!

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 1/10/2008 11:34 AM  

  • Jim,

    Those are great ideas Jim.

    The area/line emitter is something high on my list. Imagine if the emitter component was a visual component during design-time, and you could resize it to any area you want to emit particles. Then during runtime the component would be invisible and emit particles from the entire area it covered. As soon as I figure out how to do visual design-time tools I'll add that in.

    There's also a list of behavioral rules I really want to get done (variable wind & acceleration come to mind) as well as getting the explorer to a more usable state, it's pretty hard to understand right now.

    Thanks for the example!

    -Marc

    By Blogger Marc, At 1/10/2008 12:20 PM  

  • Hey Marc,
    Glad to hear you're rockin away with this project. I think it is great.

    FYI, I'd be happy to make a donation as well.

    Also, I took that example a step further and added a bitmap data / blur filter to it: http://jfoley37.googlepages.com/particles.html

    Its pretty cool where you can take it.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 1/10/2008 2:58 PM  

  • Would it be possible to have the particle explorer as a download for using offline when building a movie?

    Thanks for your hard work!

    By Anonymous Anonymous, At 1/11/2008 5:34 AM  

  • If you load up the just the swf


    http://rogue-development.com/pulse/explorer/Particlr.swf

    You should be able to do a File->Save As from your browser and save it locally.

    Someday I want to do an AIR version as well. Then the AIR app could communicate to the Flash IDE and set things up for you a little more automatically, which would rock. But that's certainly long-term thinking.

    By Blogger Marc, At 1/11/2008 5:39 AM  

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