Particle-System Tutorials

OpenGL OpenGL: Basic Coding
1

does anybody know a good tutorial in particel-systems? i have some tutorials but i don’t understand why i have to use billboarding to turn the particels to the camera - should a glLoadIdentity() call do the same?

thank you h.stony

2

Hello,

you could search for particle-system documentations
on nehe.gamedev.net or gamedev.net or here:
http://www.lighthouse3d.com/opengl/billboarding/
There are also some pictures to describe the problem.
The only way to avoid billboarding on the cpu is
to use point sprites (where supported) or doing
the billboarding in a vertex shader.

regards

Florian Engelhardt

more links:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20000623/vanderburg_01.htm
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article2002.asp

3

glLoadIdentity() discards every transformation. You generally don’t want that, because you may want to transform the whole particle system, for example when moving the camera around.

4

thank you.