Particle Universe

Description

Particle Universe is a complete system to create visually stunning particle systems for Ogre powered video games and video editting. The package consist of an editor (including C++ source) for creation of particle systems using a visual editting system, and a runtime plugin (C++) for in-game usage of the created particle system scripts. Create your own amazing effects and make use of the supplied presets and samples. The Particle Universe package includes all documentation that helps you to easily create explosions, smoke, rain, snow, blood squibs, fire and more. Take a look at the Media and learn more about the Particle Universe package in the list of Features.

Some of the benefits of Particle Universe compared to Ogre3D's native particle system are:

• Multiple emitters of different materials and renderers within the same system (No need to manually create 5 different emitters from 5 different particle script files in your code for an explosion effect for example)
• Additional particle affectors
• Better control of time dependent properties (for example speed curves and more detailed color fader; see screenshots)
• Advanced visual script editor with live preview and built in material editor

​Editor Screenshots

Preparation

Requirements

• Ogre3D version 1.8
• Particle Universe plugin (see attached files; extract folder in zip to src/external/. Note that this package has been slighly modified, it does not include sample scripts and textures and the CMakeLists.txt has been customised)

Additional Steps

• As of writing this page, the plugin is compiled with orxonox from src/external/particleUniverse. The resulting library is placed in lib within the build directory. This however won't work as the plugin needs to be loaded from [Ogre Build dir]/lib by adding particleuniverse_orxonox to the line ogrePlugins_ in orxonox.ini (like Plugin_ParticleFX and RenderSystem_GL). This should probably eventually be automated…

• add ../src/external/particleuniverse/include to src/SourceConfig.cmake under INCLUDE_DIRECTORIES

• add ADD_SUBDIRECTORY(particleuniverse) to src/external/CMakeLists.txt

• #include "particleuniverse/include/ParticleUniverseSystemManager.h" in source files that uses Particle Universe

• make sure the path to your particle scripts is mentioned in data/DefaultResources.oxr (or the corect corresponding resource-list)

Usage

Information concerning the usage of the plugin can be found here
​https://github.com/scrawl/particleuniverse/tree/master/Plugins/ParticleUniverse/docs
and in the attached source file which replaces the engine fire of a rocket projectile with a sample script that comes with the original plugin package.

The (windows only) editor and corresponding manual can be downloaded here
​http://www.fxpression.com/Download.html
A few video tutorials are also available on ​http://www.fxpression.com/ParticleUniverseTutorials.html

Tips

• If you are having issues with the editor not finding certain resources set the resource paths (to scripts, materials and textures) manually in the config file and set it to read only.

License

Particle Universe MIT License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

External links

​https://github.com/scrawl/particleuniverse
​http://www.fxpression.com/
​http://www.ogre3d.org/tikiwiki/Particle+Universe+plugin